SK On Elderberry: From Ugly Yellow To Painted Faux Granite

There are those kitchens that make you want to gag when you step into them. This old 50's kitchen has those ugly yellow tiles, I swear must have been left over from some old hospital job. The builder must have had them in a shed somewhere. Hmmmm....I know let's use them is this kitchen. Ugh!

The kitchen is a one and a half person kitchen as it is. Add to the limited space, ugly cabinets and ugly tile. Not a very inspirational place to create wonderful culinary masterpieces.

Darcy is a chef and the owner of Silver Spoon Catering in Salt Lake City and needed a pretty, efficient and well laid out little space for her wonderful foods.

These old greasy cabinets hadn't seen a scrub brush for probably forty years. Nasty old hardware had to come off.

Darcy de-greased all the cabinets and removed the doors and hardware. Sanding lightly to get a "tooth" meaning a surface which paint will adhere too. She then painted them a clean cream. Cleaned and removed the fake brass on the old hinges. Then spray painted the hardware with Dark Gray Hammered Metal Paint.

The lower cabinets got the same treatment but in deep scarlet red. ( a Sartell Girl Favorite Color) We then sanded them back a little and antiques them all. Using a satin clear coat will insure they stand up to the tough use ahead.

It's hard to tell how awful the old tile is. So we decided to completely redo the counter tops. We had a hard time deciding the easiest and least expensive route to take. She had me in town for only two days, so time ultimately made the decision for us. We would sand, prime and paint a faux black-speckled granite.

We sanded the tile and re-grouted. I used a good bonding primer to seal the old grout and tile.

We used three colors of paint. Black, Chocolate and cream. I used a large sea sponge and painted wet-on-wet. Which means you don't let it dry before adding the other colors letting them run together and blend slightly. When the paint was completely dry we applied a high gloss Varethane finish and repeated this finish three times, letting it dry between coats.