Kitchen Buffet / Coffee Bar

One of the things our kitchen is lacking is storage space.  There’s no pantry and very limited cabinet space.  So as we’ve been planning out our renovation and thinking of ways to make the space that we have more efficient for our family, one of the things we wanted to do was add some additional cabinetry along an unused portion of the wall in the eat-in area of the kitchen. 
We originally planned for it to look something like this picture below and then we wanted to add some open shelves up above the cabinets.



The extra cabinets would give us a place to store snacks as well as a convenient place to keep art and school supplies for the kids (since the kitchen table tends to be the spot where homework and art projects are done).  I also planned to move my Keurig over to that area and use it as a coffee bar, which would then free up counter space in other parts of the kitchen.
But over the weekend, we came across this vintage sideboard/buffet listed on Craigslist and I knew it would be perfect for our kitchen. And at $145, it was several hundred dollars cheaper than buying the extra cabinets. 
(This picture was taken after we sanded it down.)


I loved that it had both drawers and cabinets.  And it was just the right size for the spot we needed it to go in.  Sometimes God just drops the most unexpected blessings in our laps.
A quick side note: I tried living with the red bricks in the kitchen for as long as I could stand them, but I just couldn’t do it.
Here’s a reminder picture for you of what we started with.
 

All the dark red bricks just sucked the light right out of every inch of the kitchen.  Not to mention, red bricks just don’t fit with the vision I have in my head for my light, bright, white kitchen.  I tried giving the bricks a light gray wash to tone them down, but still wasn’t happy with the result. I kept doing white washes on the bricks until I could look at them and be happy.  I stopped when they were white.  Apparently, white bricks make me happy.
Back to my new buffet…
Usually, when it comes to painting furniture, I go with the “safe” colors. But I knew right away that I wanted to do something bold with this piece. I wanted it to make a statement; to be a fun, slightly unexpected, pop of color in our hopefully soon-to-be white kitchen.
Picking the deepest shade of teal on the color swatch felt a little bit risky to me (like I said, it’s not my usual thing), but I went with my gut and I am so in love with the end result.  The color is Behr’s “Tuscan Teal”.


The finish on the top of the buffet was chipping and peeling when we bought it, so we ended up needing to sand it all the way down to the wood.  I decided to just take that as an opportunity to mix things up a little bit and stain the top instead of just painting it all the same color.  I like the contrast and I think the dark wood goes really well with the teal.
Here’s a peek inside the cabinets and drawers.





Last night, Tim figured out how to hang my shelves up for me.  (Since they were going up on brick, it was a little more difficult.)  These shelves were from our art room at our previous house.  I just put a couple coats of primer and white paint on them to freshen them up.



And this morning, I had some time to play around with the arrangement of everything.






Coffee, anyone?  Come over and have a cup of cheer with me!


I really love the way it all turned out.  It’s so different than the original plan that we had, but I like this so much better. I go in my kitchen just to stare at it.


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