A little kitchen re-do and curtain

A little kitchen re-do and curtain

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• 8.25.2011

I don't like our kitchen much at all--it's small and the cabinets are an ugly natural wood color very typical of 1979 construction, true to our rental townhouse's age.  The floor isn't great and I don't know what to do with the walls/wall color, and the counter is uuuuugly.  And there's no room to store anything.

BUT it could be worse.  I should stop complaining--I love the fridge and it's nice we have a window to our little patio thing.  Until now I hadn't done much to it... like I said, without painting the cabinets white (a dream of mine... if you've seen my Pinterest dream kitchens you know where I'm coming from), or somehow making it bigger, I don't really know how to improve it.

I hung up a favorite curtain and always used bright, cute handtowels, and with a few other fave items ("flour"/"sugar"/"coffee" tubs that contain things other than flour, sugar, or coffee), yellow tea kettle, fresh herbs on the windowsill, it was okay.  But I've been open to redecorating.

Now that the wedding's over I have a little spare time on my hands, and when husband and I were out doing errands last weekend I found this BOMB black and white rug at Grocery Outlet for $8.  It's 100% cotton, black and white stripe, not too thick or thin, and we'd been wanting a rug by the sink anyway.  (Grocery Outlet, for those of you outside the Northwest, is super sketch for produce or food that spoils but has amazing snacks and candy and random homegoods for super cheap.  And it's employee-owned!).

Anyways, I had some black and white fingerprint quilter's cotton that I used to have covering a bulletin board.  I thought, sure, we can go with the black and white theme!  I loooooooove the rug, and the curtain goes.  I also bought some cute white-with-black-edge hand towels at Grocery Outlet for like $4 for 8.  They were a little too short to hang over the horizontal rod as-is, so I did a super cool velcro/tube conversion.  More details later.

Since the window is so narrow rather than make a pair of curtains I made a faux Roman shade-type panel, and tied it up with some white grosgrain.  Maybe someday if I still like it I'll give it a lining, make it the exact right width, sew the twill tape with plastic loops on the back, make it a real Roman shade.  But this is fine for now.

So here it is.  Not sure if it's a whole lot better, but it is different!  I have decor ADD in a major way.  Always changing things up!  Especially in a rental I don't love.

I know the fabric color goes, but it occurred to me that kitchen curtains aren't necessarily the coolest right now.  Or fabric.  Not as sleek and clean and cool as my rug, maybe.  I dunno.

What's hanging in your kitchen window?