The previous owners had chosen a very rustic/outdoor/hunting theme for the kitchen. As you can see, the bottom half of all the walls were painted green using a faux painting technique, the top halves were a cream color, and adorning the middle of each wall was a lovely wallpaper border.......(Jen absolutely hates most wallpapers, so this particular aspect of the kitchen was what really drove her to want to change it).
So here is a glimpse of the kitchen before any sort of change occurred:
Although hard to see in these pictures, make sure to check out the very unique cabinet treatment. The previous owners decided to paint only the frames of all the cabinets the same mint green featured on the walls (leaving the doors of the cabinets stained wood). This is another one of the design choices Jen would really like changed, but not until it is the kitchen's turn in the "one room at a time" world. Until that time comes, removing the wallpaper and painting the walls was going to be just what was necessary to get by.
In our minds (for what we envision when we actually do update the room) we see bright white cabinets, blue walls, black appliances/countertops, and the floor choice is TBD. Since that is what we are leaning towards for the future reno, we thought, "why not paint the room blue so that way we can see how we like it".
Now, we couldn't pick just any blue.......remember, all of the cabinet walls and frames are painted a mint green. Also, the countertops are a faux woodgrain linoleum and the sink is yellow, so we didn't want it to start turning into too much more of a color circus. Lynne and Sam helped Jen choose the perfect coordinating blue and they were off to Menards to have the paint mixed!
So, as the boys went up into the studio to work, Jen, Sam, and Lynne worked in the kitchen. In one day, and one day only, they chose the color (and of course Jen does not make decisions like this quickly), went to Menards to pick up supplies, taped, primed, and painted the entire room.
Lynne was even nice enough to take down and clean the ceiling "vent" during the day.
The first step was taking down that wallpaper. The initial attempts did not go so well:
Sam and Jen were becoming very frustrated trying to tear off the wallpaper.
Luckily, Lynne showed Sam and Jen some good tricks and after a very long, and miserable attempt at the first couple of walls, towards the end we were tearing off some ridiculously big pieces:
Jen wanted to remind herself everyday of what once was:
That chunk of wallpaper is still hanging on the fridge with the cute alphabet magnets we found hiding behind it!
We also removed the decorative rail on the corner of a wall.......we thought it would be easier than painting around it. We actually did not plan on putting it back up, until we discovered what it looked like underneath:
Underneath that rail edging were many, many different layers of paint (including a time when the kitchen was bubble gum pink). We found more of the previous color choices underneath the doorbell frame:
At this point, the walls were primed and ready for the blue paint!
(this picture was of the first few brush strokes of blue -- what made us realize we were going to have to prime the walls first).
Lynne and Jen voted that Sam do all the painting close to the ceiling because she was the tall one! :-)
Everyone is probably dying to see the end result -- well, there are no pictures to show! Since this isn't what we feel is the "completed" kitchen renovation, you are going to have to wait until we are in that room in our "one room at a time" world.
No comments:
Post a Comment