Guest blogger: Magenta & Lime

Hello! I'm Erin from Magenta & Lime.  Denyse was kind enough to have me guest post again today, after I shared my diy key and sunglasses holder a few weeks ago.  Thank you so much for the warm welcome and sweet comments you left!  Today, I wanted to share our ever-changing kitchen.

When we moved into our house a little over a year ago, we moved in to a sea of oak trim, vanities, and of course, our builder-grade oak kitchen.

We knew from the moment we bought it that we would want to update the cabinets, but we took our time with smaller projects before the big changes came along.  Little projects in the kitchen included adding some barstools that I reupholstered, and removing the doors from the cabinet on the right.  We lived with the kitchen like this for about 6 months.

After Christmas, and all of our guests came and went, I tackled the biggest project of all: the cabinets.  My husband and I both love dark cabinetry, and I had seen a million examples of gel staining cabinets, and everyone had said it was extremely easy.  So, I bought both of these products from Amazon for about $56 (including shipping), and got to work as soon as they were delivered.

Now that I have used this product, I can tell you that it really is one of the best products I have ever used.  You could apply it in your sleep, basically, and it doesn't have the terrible fumes that regular stain does.  It truly is fool-proof, and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone! We also added hardware to our doors and drawers, and it makes a huge impact to the room.  You can read all the details here.

Why did we leave one of the cabinets oak, you ask?  After living with the open concept in the kitchen for a few months, we knew that we would be even happier with open shelving.  So, using $10 stair treads, gel stain, and some brackets, my husband put these shelves up a few weekends ago. 

Before the shelves went up, we also painted the walls beige, and the trim white.  Check out these before and afters, friends!

In the long run, we hope to update the counters, floors, and appliances, but let's be honest, I have no idea when those things will happen!

 Thanks for reading, and I would love if you would stop by my blog and say hi!