Faux Painting the Cupboards/Shelves

BEFORE...

When we moved into this house we had to almost completely gut the kitchen. We kept the cabinets but had to rearrange them all over the place, leaving several of the sides with unfinished wood showing. My dad put these shelves up to utilize the dead space between the cabinets.

I never got around to painting the shelves (not the tops or the bottoms) or the sides of the cabinets. I needed to paint them to match the faces of the cabinets and that was a challenge I just wasn't up to...until today!

THE TOOLS

Today is a dessert day (woo hoo!)

I have a little (big) sugar problem, I'm addicted to it. So I have to set boundaries and my current boundary is only having 2 desserts a week so I decided to make my favorite crockpot dessert--5 Layer Brownies!! They are amazing...you should try them!
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/04/crockpot-5-layer-brownie-recipe.html

Just be sure and read Steph's comments about these...if you use a big crockpot it cooks faster around the outside. This is not a problem for me because I just eat around the outside as it cooks :) By the time the kids got home from school I'm pretty sure I'd eaten half of it...like I said, I'm addicted.



THE PROCEDURE


OK, the secret is out...I tend to rig things, I'm what you might call a "rigger".
Sadly, the husband is too...it's a problem, we know.
These cords tie into my rope lights on the top of the cabinets (you may have seen them in Monday's "Above the Cupboards" post). I didn't want to bug my dad (who just so happens to be an electrician--and would have been happy to put the lights in for me) so the husband and I rigged them up years ago and they've been providing fabulous night and early morning mood lighting ever since!

I cleared the shelves and taped the extension cords out of the way (looks like I should have used the blue tape when I painted the red!)

I'm actually not a big fan of painters tape.
I have a pretty steady hand and it's usually faster for me to take my time as I'm painting rather than spend time taping things off...but in this case it was faster to use the tape.
First I painted everything a golden color (and forgot to take a picture).


While the paint was drying I cleaned this guy, and ate more brownies (I ate today's dessert all afternoon).

Let the faux painting begin!

Once the honey color was dry I mixed black paint with some water to make it a little more runny.

I brushed the entire space with the black paint.

And then wiped it off with a damp cloth.

I mostly wiped up and down...and just worked with it until it became the look I wanted.

AFTER...

Are you impressed?

I was totally excited with the way it turned out!

Can you tell how much better it looks?

(Oops! Forgot to remove some of that blue tape)

I wish you could all see it in person, I don't know that the picture does it justice.

The picture below gives you a better idea of what it looks like.

D says special projects serve as incentives to get work done, and as I mentioned, I've been putting this project off for 4 years so I needed 5 layer brownies and an incentive to get me through...so my special project/incentive for today was to be able to put together these...

for our upcoming family vacation (thank heavens for rule #1).

There will be a total of 28 of us wearing these very cool (and maybe a little cheesy) Incredibles shirts!
Tune in tomorrow when we tackle the spice cupboard!