She painted the dark wood cabinets Soft Chinchilla, and the whole apartment feels finished
Devyn LaCamera bought her apartment over the summer, and the moment she saw the kitchen, she “instantly knew” it needed work. Dark, standard wood-grain cabinets ran around the room, the counters were black granite, and the appliances were dated. The cabinets just didn’t fit the rest of her home.
“I love interior decorating, and am especially drawn to light airy tones in the blue, tan, and white color palette,” Devyn says. The layout wasn’t the problem. The dark finishes were.
Why a dusty blue made black granite easier to live with
Dark wood next to black granite reads as one heavy block. Devyn wasn’t replacing the granite, so she needed a cabinet color that would make the counters “feel less harsh.”
She chose Benjamin Moore Soft Chinchilla, a soft, dusty blue. Against a lighter cabinet, the black granite stops blending into the wood and starts reading as a contrast, and the blue ties the kitchen to the rest of her home. “The gold fixtures bring a modern and girly element that helps brighten up the space,” she says of the new pulls.
A week of mornings and lunch breaks
This was a family job, with one professional on the team. Devyn’s aunt, Michele LaCamera, refinishes furniture for a living. Here is how they split the work:
- With help from her family, Devyn took the cabinet doors off.
- Michele painted the cabinet faces over the following week.
- Devyn took the doors. She sanded, applied shellac, primed and painted them, fitting the work into her mornings and lunch breaks.
- She finished with brushed brass bar pulls.
Splitting the job this way meant the boxes stayed in place while the doors were done in batches around a workday. If you are doing it alone, plan for longer, since sanding and coats of primer and paint on every door add up fast.
Paint wasn’t the only change. Devyn also replaced the dated appliances with stainless steel models and restyled the room with secondhand cookbooks and a light rug. A tile backsplash and a matte black sink are next on her list.
Dusty blues work on more than one kind of wood. In a cottage kitchen with plank-style wood doors, a muted blue-green spray finish turned the cabinets into one continuous surface, and the wood dining table became the warm accent instead.
Shellac, primer and a kitchen you still cook in
Shellac, primer and paint all come with fumes, and this work happened inside a home, not a workshop. The EPA lists paints and solvents among the household products that release VOCs and recommends that you increase ventilation when using them and follow label instructions carefully. Many shellac-based primers are alcohol-based and flammable, so keep them well away from the stove.
Painting cabinet faces in place is the hardest part to get right, and here a professional handled it. Drips and brush marks on boxes you can’t take to a work table are hard to fix. If you are not confident, that part is worth handing off.
The color “works perfectly in my home and makes my whole apartment feel finished,” Devyn says. “Overall, the transformation was a lot of work but 100 percent worth it.”
That’s the trick.