~ My French Country Kitchen~

 Hi there,  and welcome to my french country kitchen! 

Grab a cup of coffee and I'll tell you about how I removed some cabinets and redecorated it on a budget!

The photo below was how the kitchen looked before... 
very closed in by the

overhead cabinets above the peninsula.

My apologies for the poor quality of this photo but it was taken before I had a digital camera!

 
After many years of wanting those upper cabinets removed over the peninsula,

 I decided one day out of the blue to loosen the bolts that held them to the ceiling and discovered that it might be fairly easy to take them down.

(NOTE: I don't recommend trying something like this when you are home alone)! 

I got them half way down and discovered that they weighed a ton, and had to make an emergency call to hubby at work to hurry home an help me before they came crashing down!

(Can you picture a scene from I Love Lucy..lol!!)  LUCY you did what?!!! 
Oh... you've got some splaining to do!!

At any rate the cabinets finally came down.

 

Here it is after all opened up and looking much better!  
The open cabinet you see in the photo below was where they were attached.  
Which left half open and a door on the other side, 
also a whole lot of holes where the other cabinets had been attached. 

 Now, I couldn't have that!
Solution...  Add trim moulding and stain it to match and voila!! 

Cute open display cabinet, and open kitchen!

I had always wanted a pot rack to hang my copper from,
so I transformed a white wrought iron light fixture that we had taken down
from outdoors and removed the light fixture,
 then spray painted it in flat black.

Above I added more wood appliques below sink

Above is my

   black antique reproduction Swedish Mora clock I bought on sale from J.C. Penney. 

(sorry, it's no longer available)

My old hutch above...

now replaced with this one below that I found on Craigslist!

  

I found this great designer (Robert Allen) fruit motif fabric at Wal-Mart for 3.00 a yd. 

So I bought the whole bolt and made window treatments, chair cushions and recovered this office chair that was a thrift store find, giving a cohesive look to the kitchen area.

I also built the farmhouse table to use as a desk, from a set of table legs found at a resale store
and bought the top and apron from Home Depot and stained them to match the legs.

The wallpaper above the paneling (which I intend to change or paint eventually) was a solid olive green grass cloth.  I primed and painted over it and applied a border that matched the fabric.  Then stenciled the design below it by making my own stencil using posterboard and a fleur de lis design.

I made the window treatment on kitchen door using the same fabric.

*****

Some day I'd really love to have some new cabinets and granite countertops and new flooring, but until then I've tried to make my kitchen as charming as possible on a budget.

I'm so glad you could stop by, and hope you enjoyed the tour!!
Sherri :-)