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To paint or stain kitchen cabinets

Hi all...having a bit of a hard time trying to decide whether to paint or stain our kitchen cabinets. We have a combined kitchen/great room with cathedral ceiling. The majority of the house is wood with some small areas of painted drywall. My dilemna is the staining them would just add MORE wood if you know what I mean (and YES, I KNOW I live in a log home ;) ). If I add color, it might make it stand out more in contrast yes, but at the same time visually shrink an already not big area. I have been playing with the idea of a distressed cream color? Any ideas?

Jennifer

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Permalink Reply by Raymond Wengerd on February 1, 2012 at 1:46pm

My suggestion would be www.pinterest.com and dream away.

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Permalink Reply by John Johnson on February 1, 2012 at 8:26pm

Hey Jennifer,

This is right up my alley I am the owner of Brilliant Coatings Painting Co. and Paint and Stain is what we do.

I would like to see some pics of course, but with not being able to really see anything I can give you my limited advice. Cabinets are traditionally White - one of the thirty or so Tints of it anyway. White will not make your space look smaller in fact white is the only color for a really small space. However I see your point as painting an item in an otherwise stained area it will tend to visually shrink the area.

As I know all about how much visual wood is in the interior of a cabin I will always go for color anywhere possible. The main thing in going with a distressed look, (I assume you are talking about glazing), is it may look more out of place and/or mismatched if it doesn't match or complement the log stain. Make sure to get several samples of different colors of glazing and do or have your painter do some samples prior to completing your cabinetry. Either way don't stain them paint them. Is this what you are going for, it's a cream base coat and a mocha glaze, but mocha would not go with your interior wood Stain at all.

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Permalink Reply by John Duke on February 2, 2012 at 2:00am

Hi Jennifer,

I think this is pretty much a personal decision -- some people can't get enough of the wood look and others prefer the variation that color will bring. It sounds to me like you are concerned with too much wood in the log home already, so if I were you I would indulge myself and experiment with color. We were in much the same situation in our renovation. We are trying to blend traditional and modern, so the idea of paint didn't scare us. However, all of our cabinets are of heart pine and we didn't want to cover them with paint. We compensated by using either paint or American Clay everywhere else we could. If you can stand the financial pain, I would take a serious look at clay -- the colors are very earthy and they blend well with logs. You can use clay and paint areas together. I've even toyed with the idea of using some clay on the chinking between the logs to bring some more variation into spaces.

You might try doing some image searches to get a feel for what others have done. Here are a couple of searches you can try:

https://www.google.com/search?q=log+kitchen&hl=en&rlz=1C1CH...

I've posted lots of pictures of painted areas, including my kitchen, on my blog. You can view them here: http://condemnationplantation.blogspot.com/p/photographs.html. We are just in the process of painting the back areas where we have a lot of wallboard, so stop back in a few weeks to get more ideas.

Good luck!

John

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Permalink Reply by shanny on February 29, 2012 at 11:29pm

Thanks.....I was thinking about maybe trying some of this stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Carol Freeman on February 3, 2012 at 6:57pm

I entirely understand your need to mix it up a little with color. We are building a log home and I had the same questions. We finally decided to put some subtle color in our kitchen cabinets and went with a sage/moss color and a chocolate glaze. We get lots of compliments on it. I considered a creamy color but after I saw the samples of the moss, well I just couldn't resist it.

We didn't want to go with anything dark since it can already get dark in a log home anyway. The other colors we brought in were with pillows and furniture upholstery.

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Permalink Reply by shanny on February 29, 2012 at 11:27pm

I personally like the sage or olive greens. I have an olive green venetian plaster living room wall using Mcloskey (about the best we have used for canned stuff). You can buff it quite nice with steel wool. We have used two others and they were horrible (Behr was one). I had better luck making my own.

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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Gugg on March 28, 2012 at 8:20pm

Carol, your cabinets sounds beautiful! Do you have any pictures? We won't be building for another year, but I'm gathering ideas... Both my husband and I feel the same as Jennifer, we love wood (obviously with log homes), but would like to break it up some. I'm a big fan of green.

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Permalink Reply by Carol Freeman on March 31, 2012 at 7:17pm

Hi Cynthia

I will post some photos of our kitchen cabinets in the next few days. I'll let you know when they get posted.

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Permalink Reply by Carol Freeman on April 9, 2012 at 10:28pm

Here are some photos, but the color doesn't show exactly as it is in person. I'll try again later.

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IMG_1668 (640x427).jpg, 144 KB
IMG_1671 (640x427).jpg, 134 KB

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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Gugg on April 10, 2012 at 1:42pm

The cabinets are gorgeous! Could be the lighting, it looked very neutral but very nice. Love the glaze on it. Good taste with the hardware and glass tile backsplash... will put in my notebook for kitchen ideas. Thanks for posting the pictures!!!

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Permalink Reply by Judy & Lee Peacock on April 13, 2012 at 12:14pm

I think we have the exact same cabinets and color!! Here are mine.

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229 - Fish Drawer Pull 7-31-09.jpg, 77 KB
230 - Kitchen 7-31-09.jpg, 36 KB

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Permalink Reply by shanny on February 29, 2012 at 11:22pm

Hi.....Hmmmmmmm...decisions....decisions......the home I am presently in I built and stained my cabinets (mixed maples with a cherry wash).

In my small log home we are building now....we are really thinking about a "buttermilk color" with a darker glaze (I think we bought the paint at Rockler).

We love tiles. Buttermilk looks excellent with blue and gray slate colored counter tile (Daltile makes one)....or even better is handmolded tile from Seneca (or similar), in the old world tradition ...they are pricey but the color and shapes are outstanding. I did my fireplace hearth with them (burgundy). Really nice material.

Another color I like is when my wife glazed the wainscotting in our present home by using Navajo white (Home Depot) and we used a tan colored glaze with a wet rag to get the effect we wanted...then we applied clear water poly to seal it. It takes longer then spraying them, but they look more hand worked, natural to us.