A while back–at the same time as I was working on this dresser, actually–I also decided to take on a quick little spray-painting job. The kitchen is something I still hope to work on later this year, but as it is an ‘indoor’ project, it will wait until winter (if I have time, dissertation pending). But spray paint is an outdoor task, so this quick portion of the kitchen project was done in the summer sun.
I titled this post what I did because I think I did the opposite of what most people would do here. Most people would take a big black vent in their kitchen and paint it white (or whatever their wall color happened to be at the time). I took a big white vent and painted it black.
Here’s the big white vent.
What you can’t really tell from the photo is that it’s a really gloppy, goopy paint job. It ought to be–when I stripped it down there were actually about 10 layers of paint on it! It’s been red, teal, yellow, cream, tan, and white a few different times. But there are several of these vents in our home–probably 8 or 9–and they are all flat black. I kind of like it. It’s like wrought iron. Industrial.
So I took the vent-of-many-colors off the wall.
(Laugh if you want, but this tape kept the cats out of the hole.)
I stripped it first, using the same stuff I used to strip the paint off our floor. It actually took a couple of applications, a lot of rinsing and a lot of manual peeling to get all that paint off. It finally came off though, and then I painted the vent black. I first primed it with primer meant for metal, then I put 3 light, even coats of flat black spray paint on it. I didn’t take a picture in-progress, but this vent cover is actually two pieces. It came apart, making it much easier to paint in all the crevasses.
Now it matches all of the other vents. White (or whatever color we end up painting the kitchen) might have made the vent blend in better, but like I said, I’d prefer them all to match. I think it looks much neater and more sophisticated somehow, reminding me that the details do matter in many situations!!
Late-20s yuppie, professional techie, terminal student. I probably live farther north than you do. (
Wow! I would have never imagined anything other than vents that match your wall/ceiling color…but that looks FAB! (And yes, I did let out a chuckle at the temporary tape job. :-P )
haha I do love the temp tape job! I think it looks cool black! I totally dig it!
Black seems like a good choice because it would show the dirt — since it’s a vent it being dirty would affect your health, right? So good to have the reminder. Mine are dark too.