Kay and I talked for months about buying a sideboard for our dining area. We searched in many stores in Zürich and didn’t quite find something we liked, but Kay had the idea that we could buy something used on the cheap and paint it bright green to echo the green going on in our kitchen.

We visited several crazy overpriced used stores in Zürich with sideboards costing 2000-5000CHF (ouch!!) before I headed to my favourite used sites, Ricardo and Ricardolino which has since re-branded to Olx but I can never remember the name. I think they may have run into some legal trouble with Ricardo over names…

Anyhoo, I pulled up several comps for Kay in the price range of 100-400CHF and we whittled our choices down to these two:

I found several sideboards with built in lighting, which I knew Kay would love. He is an LED junkie! Most of the options were too expensive, but I liked the look of this one a lot and it was only 150CHF. It would just be harder to paint green. I was also concerned that if we get glass doors we cannot fill the sideboard with extra crap from the kitchen as I was intending.

Option two was the much simpler, all-wooden doors for about 125CHF. I knew it would be a lot easier to paint, but I didn’t know about the quality of the wood on either piece and if we would encounter strange varnishes or evil veneering. But with this option we could hide so many things in there and customize the doors with some handles similar to our kitchen cupboards if we wanted.

We measured both sideboards out to get an idea how much space they would take up and they were both pretty good sizes for our large dining space.

Next I photoshopped both sideboards to be electric green like our kitchen color. You know how bright it is!

Kay always thinks it is interesting to see color choices in Photoshop first and I agree, but I am not sold on the green. It is SO bright. It would make a huge statement.

Some how, the idea of making an entire sideboard this green seems like a much bigger commitment than the tiny strip of wall above the kitchen cabinets and I feel a bit guilty at the prospect of painting over what could be beautiful natural wood.

If we did go with the first option and painted it, it would be clear that the shelves and inside area through the glass doors would also need to be painted something, maybe white or we thought about a mirror foil for a spacey look.

They are just ideas, but whew… that green. I don’t know! Maybe we should keep a neutral sideboard and work on integrating some contrasting green into the living/dining room somewhere else.

What kind of bold color decisions have you made in your house?