Italian Kitchen Progress

Over the past few months, I've been slowly working on updating things in my kitchen. I have an Italian themed kitchen, that I LOVE, but it's still, after 2 years, a work in progress (as is much of my house). The biggest update, is painting another wall red!

Here is a before.

And the After!

I actually painted the larger wall on the side red last summer, I just never blogged about it. I originally wanted the wall with the window red and mentioned it to Dan when we were first painting our kitchen. He didn't like that idea, so I didn't do it. Then a few months ago, I mentioned it to him again, and he said, "yeah, that's a good idea, I think that will look nice." Men...anyway, I had red curtains at the time and didn't think I would change the wall color. The fabric store that I love so much, went out of business and I found some olive green material for like 1.50 a yard. So this update was cheap because I already had the paint from before and just spent a few dollars on making curtains.

Here is the larger wall I painted last summer.

It's hard to get a good view of it, but now that the smaller wall is red, it really pulls together the larger wall and makes it all more cohesive.

The sign above the curtain says, Good Food Good Friends. I love how it contrasts so well against the red. It's been in a few different places in the kitchen, but it was always behind a beige wall, and never looked that good.

The next update is the curtains by the sink. I don't have a good picture of them, but you can kind of see them in the left in this picture. I originally made them from one large curtain panel, but they were always a little too short and just never looked good. Frankly, they always bothered me.

I found this material at that fabric store, a few months ago, for cheap. I don't remember exactly how much I paid. I think it was like $5-6.

I made little curtain tie things, that wrap around them. I sewed some snaps on them, so they're easy to put on and take off when I open and close the curtains.

I made this sign, I think a year or so ago. It was just paper put in a frame, with the wood signs held up with putty stuff. AFter a while the paper was getting dirty, had a few water stains on it and just wasn't looking so great. It was in need of a little redo.

The after.

I found some olive green spray paint and used leftover bead board from Anna's bookcase.

The lighting is dim here, so the color is a little off.

This is probably one of my favorite projects.

I bought this at Goodwill a long time ago for a dollar or two.

It sat around for a long time because I didn't really have anywhere to put it and I had a lot of glass items already. I was looking online at some stuff and I saw a project where a lady spray painted some bottles. That's where I decided to the same with this bottle and another one.

Don't they look cool?

You would never know they are just spray painted glass.

I'm thinking of cutting out some vinyl words, like oil and wine, or something like that, to put on them.

I got this fruit stand at a garage sale a couple of years ago. It was originally yellow, I painted it red. I'm kind of getting tired of red, so I decided to paint it.

Now it's green!

Much better.

I made this sign over a year ago and still love it. I think it will stay here and I have plans to make a sign that says, Buon Appetito and put it above the window by the sink.

Slowly, yet surely, my kitchen is getting to where I want it to be. There are still a few more small projects I have in mind that I hope to get around to.