Be careful what you wish for

One of the things at the top of my wishlist when we started our renovation project was a kitchen that was classic, well-built and would stand the test of time by being as adaptable to changing trends and tastes as possible.

The answer seemed to be to get units that could be painted. This seems like such a simple thing to want but is almost impossible to find on a modest budget - most "budget" kitchens have a lacquered finish that would be difficult or impossible to paint, whereas a handmade, bespoke kitchen obviously offers you the option to have it painted in any colour you want from the outset, and then easily paint it when you want an update in the future. I think this must be a conspiracy by kitchen manufacturers to ensure you have to buy an entirely new kitchen every time you want to tweak the colour scheme of your home!

Anyway, I was over the moon when I found out that Plain English - makers of everyone's fantasy kitchens - were bringing out an "off the shelf" budget-ish range of units which would be every bit as customisable as their bespoke kitchens as they come primed and ready to paint any colour you want: britishstandardcupboards.co.uk

But, this did lead to a problem of epic "first-world problem" proportions - "if I can paint it any colour I want, then how do I decide - out of all the colours known to wo/man - which one I want?". I flirted with the idea of having an almost black, dark blue like the one above, and then with having a totally white kitchen and then yellow and everything in between. In the end I made a bit of a panicked decision and went with Papers & Paints, SC218 which on paper looked pretty similar to the dark colour above:

Unfortunately, this has been a bit of a painful lesson in paint colour testing as the emulsion I tested was exactly the dark shade I wanted, but the eggshell looked completely different - as I found out only after the decorators had finished painstakingly painting the entire kitchen!