So you think I’m going to just put up the tiles and be done with it? Oh, you don’t really know me yet, do you?

I’m going “all in” on this French Country inspired kitchen. I’m painting the kitchen cabinets a rustic, textured light yellow to bring out the background color of the tile.  

Now don’t freak out over YELLOW cabinets!

Think crème brûlée. Chiffon yellow. Lemon sorbet. Whipped butter. A light and fluffy colored yellow. 

A Yellow GE Wonder Kitchen

Before we get to my French Country yellow, we’re going to make a side trip to the land of mid-century modern. Not a replica of it, but the real thing from my childhood.

You see, I actually grew up in a house with a yellow kitchen. A totally GE Kitchen from the late 1950s called the Wonder Kitchen. It was available in five colors and we had the Canary Yellow version. Everything was canary yellow in that kitchen – the steel cabinets, stove, wall oven and the cool wall hung refrigerator where the first two “upper cabinets” of the unit were the fridge and the third was the freezer. Even the counters were canary yellow. (And, like a true mid-century family, so were our kitchen accessories including our flour + sugar + coffee + tea canisters. I also remember the hand-cranked ice crusher being yellow!)

You occasionally see these kitchens if you surf the web. Sometimes you see pictures of actual units, but more frequently you see ads, especially at the Retro Renovation and ClickAmericana’s websites. The image above and the ad below is part of a two page spread in Life magazine’s September 12, 1956 issue and were found via Google Books where ALL issues of Life magazine are available (which is soooo cool).

Our kitchen configuration most closely resembled the pink one in the ad with the wall refrigerator on the left and the oven at waist height on the right, but in the yellow of the laundry room. The kitchen was original to the house, which was built around 1956. My folks were the second owners of the house, which we moved into in the early 1960’s.

I had a great childhood in that house, and though you’d have found me in the basement sewing while my sis was upstairs cooking, I did love that yellow kitchen. It was indeed, a Wonder Kitchen as a lot of wonderful memories were created there. 

So for me, a kitchen with yellow cabinets is a happy place. And one I’m looking forward to creating for the Color Filled Cottage.

 

My Yellow Cabinets Vision

So where are we now in creating our Vision for the French Country Kitchen? This is where we were at the end of the last post, with the inspiration tile digitally added in:

And here’s where we’re heading with the cabinets painted “lemon sorbet”:

I can’t wait, can you??? Would you dare to paint your cabinets yellow?

Have a wonderfully creative and color filled day,

Sharon