Painting our kitchen countertops

Prepped and ready to paint

One of the very first projects I wanted to tackle when we moved into the manor was to give our kitchen a little facelift. Our house, as a whole, went though a substantial renovation in the 1990s. The once cold, tiny kitchen was turned into a butlers pantry and the dining room transformed into a bigger, open kitchen. Functionally, its perfect and while the design isn’t exactly my taste, the quality of the cabinetry was exceptional and was done with a nod to the arts and crafts style that the house was built in. 

However, the countertops was a cheap formica in a dark green and the back splash was a beige with some random leaf tiles. These screamed “dated” not “vintage” to me and I wanted them to go! 

Since the countertops were cheap formica, and because I was simply trying to achieve a facelift for the kitchen, I decided I didn't have anything to lose and would to try countertop paint. 

We bought the Giani Marble Countertop Paint Kit and I started studying the process. Giani has a great how to video on their youtube page and I watched that several times, but I also decided to check out as many “before and after” items of the marbling that I could find. And yikes. The marbling, which I assume is meant to distract from any potential imperfections in the countertops, was oftentimes incredibly distracting in its own right because of how badly it came out. 

Jeff is a talented artist and I knew that if we were going to have successful marbling, he would need to be the one to do it. But then we started wondering if we should even bother with the marbling at all.

The giani kit comes with a warranty but it was explicit that that would be voided if the marbling wasn’t completed. Once we painted the white, however, we loved the change so much and decided not to mess with a good thing and skipped the marbling. 

We completed this project 10 months ago and it still looks wonderful, hasn't’ stained and has remained durable.

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