Twill & Twee: Annie Sloane Saved My Kitchen

Buying a house is tough. You fall in love with one and it gets swiped from under you before you get a chance to bid. You view so many soul-less boxes you feel like its a never ending wave of 'maybe if it didn't have this floor, or those lights or just why did they put a door there?'

And then it happens, you stand in the kitchen of a strangers house and just know that its your home.

So you fight tooth and nail in the bidding war, win and the next thing you know the keys are rattling in the lock....you're in!!!

And then.......the planning starts!!

We were totally skint after buying our house. We begged and borrowed and bought slightly above our means but the fun thing about that is we are having a lot of fun planning our rooms and mostly in the do it yourself manner.

Everyone needs a functioning kitchen, ours functioned but my gosh was it UGLY!!!

If you are a pine lover this house is for you, if pine burns your eyes look away now.

When we viewed the house these were the real estate photos:

My aunt had these floor tiles back in the 90's when terracotta was all the rage. In all fairness these floor tiles are actually fine. I just needed to pull the eye up from the floor where it is immediately drawn.

We loved the splash tiles, a lovely colour but wrong in this room.

So after a tonne of research on painting techniques and paints I had planned on stripping, priming and painting our kitchen until a friend told me about Annie Sloane. No priming, just painting!!! Amazing!!

Annie does not stock her paints in regular paint stores, they are usually sold in small furniture stores, don't worry its available nationwide you just might have to do some research.

It works on everything!!! Our cupboard doors had a plastic veneer on them, basically mdf covered in a plastic layer to make it look like real wood. Most of it had peeled or cracked away from the fronts so I scraped it off and revealed the naked mdf.

All of the doors had to come down and the hinges and handles removed.

I used a wood filler to fill the holes of the old handles because we wanted to replace them with new ones. Make sure you sand back the filler when its dry to achieve a smooth finish.

I chose Paris Grey for my cupboards as our walls are white. Its a lovely bluish grey, really soft. The swatches are a bit deceptive I'd recommend getting a sample first and trying it. When I look at this tin and the paint on the doors they look very different.

So what do you do with Annie Sloane Chalk Paint? You bang it on!!! No streaks no smudges it just glides on and dries so fast. Also one tin goes a hell of a long way, i still have some left in the bottom of the tin for touch ups.

I went between a small roller with a gloss roller on it and a very soft brush for getting into all of the grooves. Each door took minutes!! It was the logistics that took the longest, propping doors on the kitchen table and also doing it in the 2 hour windows i had while my son was at creche.

I painted 2 coats onto the doors and the exterior of the cupboard frames, basically any bit of wood that was visible while the cupboard doors were closed.

You must also wax your doors to make them waterproof and washable. Annie also provides a fabulous wax, again one tin goes a long way. This takes a bit longer than painting but once you get into a good rhythm its fine.

For the wax I used an angled flat head brush because rather than paint it on you sort of massage it on and then wipe it off with a rag, its quite satisfying I have to admit.

Note: Waxing alters the colour slightly, it makes it slightly darker so be aware of this when choosing from your samples.

I replaced the handles with a brushed chrome handle from ikea (no one would ever guess) and we replaced the old eyesore of a cooker hood with a new shiny one to match the handles.