Three years ago before my ceiling leaks, I was deep into a kitchen renovation. I ran out of money when I renovated the rest of my house after buying it, but managed to save my pennies for a couple years to get going at last.

Turns out that I should have put off a different room and had my kitchen done first, because I hated it I hated it I hated it.

All the wood was this weird putty color that had a grey wash over it. Which meant that it always looked dirty. As somebody who's a bit of a germaphobe (especially where I prepare my food), it bugged me every single day. How can I tell when there's dirt on something when everything always looks dirty?

But it wasn't just the material my cupboards and drawers were made up... it was the shape. There's this weird groove that goes around the center panel which collects dust... and it has these rounded corners on everything that I didn't like at all.

The plan was to repaint the cupboards then pay to have my doors and drawers rebuilt to be the shaker-style I love.

AND THEN PAINT EVERYTHING WHITE!

During the original renovation when I had all my walls painted white I went through a dozen shades until I found the white I wanted... a touch warm but not yellow. Plus a different white for the trim which was a bit more glossy but a visual match (it's weird, but going from eggshell to semi-gloss makes the color change!).

So when it came to my cupboards, I thought the color of white was already chosen. I'd just use the trim color. Done!

But then I painted a cupboard door to see how it looks.

And was mortified to find that painting a large surface looks entirely different than painting a thin strip of trim! So it was back to the drawing board. The wall color in semi-gloss didn't work. The white colors around my colors didn't work. And then... just as I was going to give up and pick a color that wasn't white, I mixed two of the whites I had sampled... and ended up with exactly the right shade. Proud of myself for my ingenuity, I took it to the paint store, explained what I had done to get the color I wanted, only to have the guy say "Oh yeah, that's Simply White."

Then yesterday and today they started spraying Simply White on all my cupboard frames...

After almost six years of dirty-looking cupboards, the kitchen of my dreams is starting to come together!