Kitchen Makeover

So, another "little project" that I worked on was our kitchen. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that bad, but I just didn't particularly care for it! As you can see below, the walls were all white with a pink flower border (I am NOT a pink-flower-border-type of person) and the ceiling had wallpaper of little pink and blue flowers. My idea was to scrape all that off and then repaint my kitchen a darker yellow with sunflowers for a theme. So in late August I started scraping off the border. I discovered something with this: wallpaper installed by professionals does not come off as easily as the pre-pasted borders that I typically use. So it took me weeks of working here and there to get the border off. It really got to a point where come hell or high water it was going to get done! I was on a mission. So I finally got the border off. Then the ceiling, which turned out to be contact paper that had been glued over a textured ceiling. Why anybody decided to do this is beyond me, but that's what it was. So it took me a few weeks of scraping that off, then sanding the ceiling. What a dusty mess that turned out to be! I was about to throw in the towel then! But I got it done. And we also had to replace the kitchen light because I got a little carried away with the sanding and the sand-block flew out of my hand and shattered the light! Oops!

Then I had to take a break for a few weeks once I had it all bare white. After spending weeks up on a ladder working above my head, my rotator cuff said, "enough," so needed to rest that up a bit. Who'd have thought? But, it was driving me crazy and I had this uncontrollable urge to get the job finished. So I painted the ceiling first. That actually was a very easy thing to do, and only took me a couple of hours to prime and paint. Then I waited almost a week and decided to tackle the walls. So I put up this special tape that says you can put it on newly painted surfaces and painted the walls. That took a bit longer, but it got completed. Then time to take off the tape, and with the tape came off part of the newly painted ceiling. So after a minor meltdown and a few days break, I re-primed and re-painted the ceiling, this time not taping the walls or anything. Then I got the sunflower border up, cleaned up, and FINALLY was finished with this small project at the end of October! HAL-LE-LU-JAH!!!

BEFORE PICTURES

AFTER PICTURES

I was pretty pleased with the final result. Though I have to admit, if I had known up front just how much time and energy and trouble it would be, I think I would have learned to love what was already up when we moved in. But I am just so glad that it's finished!

Summer 2008: I'm going to try to finish up my entryway
and paint the living room and dining room!
Can't wait to get those done!

posted by Elena