apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Looks like a lot of work. I liked the clean all-white look from before though. Don't the stripes make the space seem smaller?

I kind of liked it better with the blue stripes.

A very successful redo -- think it looks great! Only issue for me: why is that green bag hanging on the wall? The way it's hung is not particularly "arty"; it's not that special of a bag (to me at least -- perhaps has great meaning to Anne); and ultimately doesn't look "thought out" which is so untrue of the rest of the project.

The bag's probably not arty so much as it's utilitarian. I hang my grocery bag much the same way :) Don't use plastic bags, peeps!

Makes the kitchen look smaller than it really is, white with one of the two colors as a stripe pattern would have worked better. Also the horizontal stripes push you in, vertical would have been a hit.

OH COME ON!!!!
It looks gorgeous.

Hello folks.
The all white apartment thing was 2 years ago and is really over now. Any moment now, walmart is going to launch some very 'cutting edge of the moment' all white line.
I have nothing against a well done all white apartment (heck to be perfectly honest, i currently live in one), but let's embrace our fellow apartment dwellers and the world of well designed NOT WHITE apartments... apartments can be wonderful and modern and spacious without being WHITE and not every small space nees to be made bigger.

ok, stepping off my soapbox.

nice stripes anne.

The "after" looks much warmer and like a nicer place to wander into with a glass of wine...

I think I would like the stripes if there was less of the other items on the wall however utilitarian.

Before I painted the stripes the main color of the walls was/is a stone color. It works best with the countertops. The stripes actually open up the kitchen. A vertical stripe would have made it look like a small cage.

I face west so the evening sunsets bring in great light into the kitchen and the pale gold stripes are almost an extention of the sun.

The green shopping bag is strictly utilitarian. I use it when I go grocery shopping instead of collecting tons of white plastic bags (how european). It's on the wall because I have no place else to keep it and it's right there to grab. I agree that's it's not the look I would have gone for if I was going to put art there but it's a necessity and it doesn't bother me.

yeah, i don't think it's that great. i also agree with the comment that it might look better sans the paintings and bag

i think this would be a lot more striking had one of the colors not been a pastel. the powder blue and butter yellow (which is what my monitor is seeing) is too baby nursery to make a strong point, and i think it's also the reason people aren't excited about the bag -- that's a lovely bright green bag, and had you used it as inspiration it would have been integrated into the space beautifully rather than just a design obstacle one can't possible get around. which isn't to say you'd have to paint the kitchen with bright green stripes, but if one of the colors had related to the bag somehow it would be the difference between 'pretty cool' and 'completely rad'.

but i disagree that the stripes make the space look smaller. i also disagree that one of the colors and white would have been a better choice. i think striping is a really daring way to go, and it's definitely an improvement over the all-white kitchen.

I just read what Maxwell wrote about the paint job. It's wrong. As I said in an earlier post the walls are a stone/taupe (color Cape Hatteras Sand for all of you with the BM paint fan)- not blue. The pale muted gold (not pastel or buttery yellow) is the color of the stripes. The main room of my studio is the gold color so the stripes tie the two rooms together.

It looked nice as white (or whatever the color was), but I like the stripes. They make the place look cozy--almost a cottage-like feel.

Nice job!

I liked the art on the wall when it was all white- and while still lke the art (the art itself), you might gain from repositioning it now that you have the stripes - they are/seem a little 'out of place', when seen along with the stripes , bag and round clock ...

What does everyone make of the Benjamin Moore™ assertion that color contrasts, not dark colors, make a room seem smaller? Ms. Stripes seems to disagree with this. I think it has more to do with personal thresholds rather than dark colors or contrasts. Dark colors make it hard to see, and contrasts keep the eyes busy (giving some creedence to BM™'s assertion).

Yikes, tough crowd!

First of all, stop fixating on "white walls or not white walls"... as Anne said, the walls didn't start as white in the first place.

I love, love, love the wide horizontal bands... and there is NO WAY these bands make the real room look smaller.. quite the contrary, these bands push the walls out, so if it appears smaller, that's just a trick of the photography.

Um, people, Anne has impeccable taste, so I doubt the end result of this is anything less than gorgeous in real life.

Thanks for sharing the before, after and how-to.

I think Zed has it right on the repositioning of the elements, except I'd get rid of the two (or three) pieces of artwork altogether, get a smaller wall clock and hang it and a nice hook to hold the bag over the counter.

I was just noticing something - I have cabinets over my fridge similarly positioned to that in the photos. I can't reach them, so they're completely useless to me. Are there shallower fridges somewhere, out there, or are deeper cabinets completely impractical?

looks nice! congratulations!

Ok, this is clearly not showing to advantage on my monitor: it looks like a dark grey-blue with butter yellow stripes. I find it hard to understand how stripes open up a space ... don't they make the ceiling seem lower because the height is chopped up? I agree with opponox's comments about working the bag into the colour scheme. I think that's partly why I liked the before shot where the walls look nearly white... the bag is this great shot of fun colour. In the second, it looks like it clashes. Maybe it's less prominent when you're actually in your kitchen or you just overlook it since it's such a daily object for you, but in the picture with the (great) clock, it really stands out. I notice one pic is from the afternoon and one from evening and that probably makes a difference to how bright the space feels too.

Tom,

I don't think it's only Benjamin Moore's claim that contrasting colors make a space appear smaller...I think it's a general color principle. I've been playing around with BM's "Personal Color Viewer" because I've been considering painting my living room ceiling the same color as the walls - for the express purpose of "lifting" the ceiling: it is now just plain off-white, but next to the wall color, the contrast DOES give the impression that the ceiling is like the lid of a pot, a sort of "cap" on the room. By having the walls & ceiling the same color, the eye does not "stop", thereby creating the illusion of additional height. BTW: I just painted my bathroom black (yep, black - semigloss)and that INCLUDES the ceiling, so I've had the opportunity to see this principle in action. An apartment recently featured in the Times had a blue living room and blue ceiling too, which the apt. owner says is one of the signature design principles of his interior designer, Miles Redd.
See slideshow at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/realestate/23habi.html?ex=1155182400&en=686ad88ed4601d67&ei=5070

I think the bag looks artsy when it was all white. i think the problem is there is too much other stuff on the walls.

OK, I have an off-topic question about the bag. If you use that bag for groceries, so as not to waste plastic, what do you use for your trash? I'd love to use a rattan bag for groceries, but then would have nothing for my garbage. I use my shopping bags for trash.

Thanks!

Dark blue with yellow? On my monitor, it looks like a very pale blue with an equally pale yellow. Soft and low contrast!

Maybe this is why I like it and other people don't.

P(too) is correct that horizontal stripes should push the walls out. The stripes might visually lower the ceiling slightly, but small kitchens often have ceilings that feel disproportionately high, so no loss there.

Oh man, I feel terrible but from the pics I prefer the before look too! I'm sure the after looks much better in person.

I think it looks nice - very warm. Much warmer feeling than before. Painting those stripes took guts. I'd be afraid of screwing it up and ending up with unstraight, sloppy looking blocks of paint. (Not much of a painter, I'm afraid.) It looks great!

Could be my monitor, but definitely looks better
before. Stripes do nothing for the room.

I soooo don't get the anti-stripe people on this. At all.

Um, also, did it ever occur to you that if you liked it better before, that you could also just *not* post. Jeez. What's the point of a negative dogpile on something so innocuous. God, no wonder nobody wants to post house tours or enter contests.

Especially after she went to the trouble of doing it AND documenting it expressly for the AT community.

Anne,Its Great.Simple as that.

Anne, I like it. Soothing, but with vitality. Especially like the green shopping bag too.

Well, I think it's gorgeous. That whole kitchen looks beautifully personal and lived-in, and that's far more appealing to me than an aesthetically "complete" space that doesn't look like it suffers actual cooks or people with human needs or impulses. The photo I linked to (click my name) is utterly charming.

Anne, thank you for taking the time to document this. I applaud you your bravery in posting the results to the ever-tougher critics here!

I like it too. Plus, I love all posts that highlight process, no matter the result.

Thanks Anne.

Anne, it's yummy. And for some reason makes me think of Parisian bakeries... and thus pain au chocolat (okay, I'm hungry)
Anyone else here intrigued by Phyllis' black bathroom? I want pics!!

Finally got a chance to look through the slideshow... I really like the final result. The use of muted tones with bold, wide striping seems really fresh and modern to me. It works great with cabinets and countertops and warms up the room quite a bit for me. Its previous incarnation as an all-white kitchen seemed a little "safe" and lacking of a personal stamp.

There was a house in a House & Garden years ago where they painted the hallway large horizontal bands of chocolate brown and a mint green and it was gorgeous. I've always wanted to do it so Anne, count me with P2 as a fan.

I like the stripes very much. (On my monitor the colors are a light gray and a light peach.) What i especially like about the design is that it looks like rays of sun shining through giant blinds -- an unexpected optical illusion. It looks very warm & inviting. Good job!

I think it's okay to post negative comments as long as they're for the sake of honesty, not maliciousness. It does make me wary of ever posting a picture of anything, but ultimately I would want to know what people (and you people specifically) really thought.

I like Anne's reaction. She's sure that she likes the effect and I trust her when she says it's quite beautiful in real life. Photos of paint and color can really differ from the real thing. I think comments only confirm what you already know, and if you're not bothered by differing opinions, then you know you really like something.

On another matter, how do people make sure that the tape is straight when you do stripes? Sorry, if this is discussed in the slideshow and I glossed over it.

I do like this.

One thing I would probably try to do is level the fridge. It looks as if it's leaning towards the back a bit, and with the horizontal stipes, it's hard not to notice. The image seems somehow a little out of focus because of it.

Congratulations.

I love reading all these comments. The colors are really quite nice. Muted and earthy and IMHO, elegant. Hard to achieve that in a run of the mill, federally subsidized housing complex.

Again, the bag is almost not even there for me since it's used for all my shopping and not meant as a statement. To design around it would be absurd. It would be like designing around the pot holders or something.

Jules - keeping the tape straight was SO easy. I just measured and marked the distance, drew a line using a yardstick and then putting the tape on the line. A no-brainer.

John - you're right. The frig is at a slight slant as is the stove. I've been trying to get maintenance up here to fix that.

I thought about the comments concerning the art. I took some of it down and will live w/out it for a few days but my first reaction is that of an empty, hollow sounding kitchen. I also took notice of the idea of repositioning the art now that the stripes are up. I thought about that when I first starting putting the art back up after the paint job was over. Then I thought that it looked too planned and controlled. But I'll live without for a while and rethink it.

Sorry for all of you who can't see the true colors (Cindy Lauper singing now) because it really does make the kitchen glow with the sunset coming thru the kitchen window.

Again, I really appreciate all the positive and constructive comments. But don't expect me to post my apt. anytime soon :)

I like the colors and the effect. I think it probably shows a lot of the owner's personality, and it livens the kitchen up.

Good job! I would just chalk the objections up to different tastes, if I were you.

i don't think it would be absurd to design around one's potholders at all. in fact, one of my favorite things about my own kitchen (which is also painted against all the "rules") is the way the paint color somehow brings all the random utilitarian stuff together. best of all are the jam jars i use as a spice rack -- the red faux gingam pattern on the lids ties in perfectly with the walls. (you can see all this on my flicker page, which is linked in my name)

all that said, my opinions of your kitchen have very little to do with objective 'good design' and everything to do with my own taste. i think your kitchen looks lovely, very warm and french and cottagey as others have said.

I love the mirrored backsplash--what a great way to open up a room! Great job all around--your kitchen is warm and reflects your personality (I assume) without overwhelming it as a workspace.

My entire kitchen design *is* my potholders. Rental joy.

I'm so glad my monitor has reasonably accurate colors. You guys who are seeing something else don't know what you're missing.

Hi LILS,
My apt. isn't quite ready yet, but I DO plan to send in some update photos, including the black bathroom. I have a large window in there, and as a window treatment I hung a silky square fringed shawl - turquoise, mmmm! That's my accent color. You know how beautiful a black + aqua ensemble is when it comes to apparel? Well it works just as well in home decor too!

I also think there is a difference in "constructive criticism" when someone is *asking* for help, and being offered it when someone is obviously proud of something and is sharing it out of pride... *and* when the project is already completely done...

I think constructive negative comments are partly why I *would* post things. If I just got an ego-boost of all-positive comments, I wouldn't learn anything or get any new ideas. My friends who come over can be all-admiring. Random people on AT are more likely to see things differently and suggest ideas I'd never have thought of. Admittedly, sometimes photos look way different from real life and so stuff that would look great in a photo, wouldn't in real life (and vice versa), but I thought the point was a dual one of inspiration and discussion of ideas. In the end, people's taste will differ, but as long as comments are not uselessly mean, I don't see why constructive criticism should be held back.

I like the bag beneath the clock.
The color, and the placement. You might not be intend an art installation look but...

some small shelves aligned with the sripes might work as a later thing to do....

Allison,

I don't disagree, but I don't really see how there are any comments in this thread that can't be chalked up to taste. The comments are either: 1) I liked it better before (and Anne obviously likes it better now, so...) 2) I'm not a fan of pastels (and Anne apparently is) or 3) there's too much on the walls.

Anne said she'd think about the comments about too much art, but was happy with it. I don't think there were any negative comments (that I noticed anyway), but I'm just saying that it all boils down to taste.

Is any design project ever really completely finished? It seems to me that the comments about the art/clock/bag/etc could be extremely helpful. I know that I would probably move all of those things 20 times before I decided where I wanted them. And Anne has probably looked at the walls so many times that it's hard to actually "see" them anymore.

I do agree that the "it's not that great" comments aren't particularly constructive...