Slowly but surely, we’ve been trying to add dark elements to the kitchen here and there to ground some of the “light and bright”-ness. We added artwork with dark frames to the wall of white subway tile, but the stove wall was looking kind of bare.

I’d had my eye on these zinc letters over at Anthropologie for a while. On the other hand, I’ve always been a fan of the colorful fabric “EAT” letters on in the kitchen on the set of Cougar Town. By the way, if you haven’t seen the show, it really has nothing to do with either kind of cougars. The only problem was that the zinc letters from Anthropologie were too light (we have enough light already!) and the fabric letters (also from Anthro) aren’t available anymore. Plus, I think the colors/patterns would be a little much with all of the subway tile. Not to mention, having fabric wall art over a stove seems like a bad idea. So I decided to combine the two concepts and get my DIY on! Here’s what I ended up with…

I picked up these paper mache letters from Hobby Lobby for $2.47 a piece and gathered some oil-rubbed bronze spray paint, acrylic craft paint (gold and black), a couple of brushes and some satin finish polyurethane – which I already had on hand.

I started out by spray painting the letters with Rust-Oleum Metallic Oil Rubbed Bronze Spray paint…

They actually looked really good after just this one step, but I wanted to distress them a bit to give them a weathered metal look. I added a few small dabs of black and gold paint here and there. I fully intended on using brushes, but for the most part, I just used my fingers. While the paint was still a bit tacky, I used some fine grit sandpaper to dull down the finish. By sanding the letters while they were still tacky, the finish ended up looking a lot less intentional.

You really can’t mess this up… just go with what you think looks good. If you mess up, just spray paint them again and start over. Come to think of it, giving them a light second coat of spray paint might make them look even more layered/weathered.

Since these were going in the kitchen right over the stove, I wanted to make sure they would be well-protected from possible food splatters. So I sprayed them with a light coat of Rust-Oleum satin polyurethane. This stuff dried super fast, and the letters were ready to hang within minutes…

We hung them on the wall using handy dandy 3M picture hanging strips (just like we hung the art on the other side of the kitchen).

You might not be able to tell in the photos, but the finish is really cool. It looks different at every angle (and in every photo) and you wouldn’t guess they were paper mache. Greg and I both really like the way they turned out! It adds some much needed darkness to the stove wall and keeps with the whole “clean lines with a few semi-rustic accents” thing we’ve got going on.

Speaking of the kitchen, we’ve got even more kitchen-related goodies coming your way tomorrow. We’re getting closer and closer to that big “Kitchen reveal” post. Ahhh, that will be a happy day for us!

Btw, have you entered the DENY Designs giveaway? They’re giving one lucky reader a custom duvet cover (a $183 value!). Click here to enter!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been fine-tuning some new art prints for the Etsy store. This weekend, we finally got a chance to hang some of the new prints in the kitchen! We wanted something fun and simple with a dash of vintage flair. And this is what we came up with…

We’re really digging the art and the fact that the dark frames (which are from Target) really help break  up the mass of subway tile – which brings us a bit closer to the look we’re aiming for in the kitchen. Just by adding the artwork, we killed three birds with one stone: added color (which coordinates nicely with our “stack of books color scheme“), broke up the wall of subway tile, and added a dark element to ground the otherwise all-white kitchen. We plan on adding even more dark accents to the kitchen by way of window treatment and the light fixture over the sink. By the way, noticed the clothespin herb planter on the counter? Yep, the herb died. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Until I get the nerve to try again, one of the planters is being used as a candle holder – which has been nice to have in the kitchen.

When it was time to hang the art, I was gung-ho about drilling a few holes in the grout (like we did when we hung the artwork in the hall bathroom). After all, grout can easily be patched up. Greg, on the other hand, wasn’t too keen on the idea. I guess he knows how I am about changing my mind down the road. Since the kitchen doesn’t get much humidity (like the bathroom), I decided to go along with Greg’s idea and see how it went.

As the directions on the package said to do, we first cleaned the surface with isopropyl rubbing alcohol (the package specifically says to not use any other household cleaners). We used five strips on the back of each frame. The package says you only have to use four sets for this size frame, but we did five just in case. Though now that we see how good they hold (which is like super duper well), we think four sets might have been just fine. The concept of the Command Strips is pretty smart when you think about it!

We really like how the art looks in the kitchen, and we can’t wait to add other finishing touches throughout the space. Next on the list: a window treatment and light fixture. We’re getting there… one day at a time.

Click on over to our Etsy store and check out the new art, including the kitchen series above. For 10% off your order, use the code “7thHouseReader” at checkout!

A few times a week, we get emails asking us questions about the house. Paint colors, furniture, light fixtures, budgets, dogs, etc. One thing we’ve been getting a lot of emails about recently are the new kitchen countertops. Therefore, we thought it was time to do a big ‘ole post and give you the 411 on them – from how they’re made to how we’re liking them now that we’ve been living with them for a few months.

Before we cover all of your FAQs about our countertops, let me fill you in on some details about quartz countertops. Silestone, Cambria,  Zodiaq, and other quartz brands are all made the same basic way: the factories take ground-up quartz and mix it with resin, which allows the material to harden into a flawless flat surface. The end product is nonporous, heat resistant, and low-maintenance. On the flip side of that same coin, because quartz is a generally inexpensive material, the final product is also inexpensive compared to some other stone-based countertops (like marble, for example). Around our part of the world anyway.

What made you pick quartz over other materials?
For us, we really felt that quartz was the best bang for our counter-buying buck. Laminate wasn’t an option, and though we liked the look of butcher block, it scratches and gouges too easily. We found granite and quartz to be neck-and-neck on pricing (depending on what you get), but granite is higher maintenance. Corian is a cool product, but when you go beyond the tiny sample and see a big slab of it in person, we thought it felt kind of like super hard plastic. Then there’s marble. Ash especially loved the look of marble, but being on the much higher end of the price spectrum, it wasn’t in our budget. We ultimately decided on quartz because it looks great, is relatively low-maintenance, and we really liked the color/style options. That brings me to the next question…

What brand/color did you get?
Cambria‘s Torquay (more on that here). Not only did we really like the color/style, but we also dug the fact that it’s US-made.

It looks really white in photos. Is it that white in person?
First of all, in our very unprofessional opinion, countertops are really hard to photograph! In the first round of photos we posted about the kitchen, it looked super white, and you couldn’t really see the veining. We finally got a pretty good  hang on how to photograph them better, so now you can see the veining and color variations. The base is a milky white and the veins are a mixture of cream and gray. So you can get a better idea, here’s a photo of a bright white ceramic creamer against the countertop…

Can you see the seams?
If you take a look at the right-hand side of the picture above, you can see a very thin line. That’s one of the four total seams in our kitchen, and two of those are hidden behind the stove. So yes, the seams are there, but they are so thin and nicely finished that they’re definitely not an eyesore.

Is it  really scratch and heat resistant? 
So far, I haven’t seen a single scratch. As a mater of fact, Ash dropped the rough side of a heavy piece of tile flat on the countertop (by accident) and it didn’t leave a mark. On the heat side, having lived with other materials in the past, I’m a little hesitant to put this claim to the test on my own counters. It’s said that you don’t have to worry too much about heat discoloring the material, but the thermal shock from setting something very hot on a room temperature counter can cause cracks. The moral of the story: we can probably get away with it, but we use a potholder just to be safe. We have a good-sized left over piece in the shed and I’m dying to do a MythBusters-style post on the durability! 

What kind of edge did you get?
We went with the standard “eased” edge. It’s the closest thing you can get to a squared edge, and we wanted clean, simple, and modern lines in our kitchen. This is also the least expensive edge option, so it was a win-win!

What do you clean it with?
On a day-to-day basis, we use Mrs. Meyer’s countertop spray (our go-to “flavor” these days is Basil). Their products are free of ammonia, chlorine, artificial colorants, phosphates and all that jazz. It contains a special vegetable protein extract that naturally cleans, degreases and removes odors.

What is the turnaround time for quartz?
Mileage may vary, but the turnaround time for us was about a week and a half. Luckily, our provider had exactly what we needed already in stock, so all they had to do was measure our cabinets, cut each piece to the appropriate size, and install them. It was probably one of the simplest processes in the whole kitchen.

Who did you buy your countertops from?
We purchased the countertops from Alpha Stone, a local company here in Richmond. From start to finish, they were really great to work with and we’d definitely use them again if we’re ever in need of more countertops.

I think that about sums up the most frequently asked questions we’ve been getting in our inbox. Overall, we’re really happy with the decision to go quartz. Bottom line: it’s good-looking, low-maintenance, and durable. I’m not sure we could ask for much more.

How about you guys… Do any of you have quartz countertops in your home? While we’re on the subject, anymore countertop-related questions for us?