the kitchen

So I decided about 3 weeks ago that I was tired of my wall papered ugly kitchen and I needed a change. My little sister just happened to be in town that weekend and embraced my vision. We went to town and got some ideas and paint colors and did a bunch of other shopping.

 

That evening I brought home the paint samples and showed Michael what I was thinking. He said "okay but I'm not going to help" and I said "fine". Just to show that I meant business I went in the kitchen and pulled off some wall paper and threw it away. That way I had to do something or the kitchen would look worse than before!

 

After hours of peeling and scraping, this is what I had to look at.

Yeah it wasn't pretty! There were about 5 layers of different wall paper on that wall. Luckily most of it came off with little resistance!

 

After realizing that simply painting on this junk was not going to work, I started looking at other options. I decided to texture the walls to cover the flaws and then paint!

 

First I had to prime with an oil based paint to prevent issues with the wall paper that we couldnt remove. Water based would have cause bubbling and such so oil based was the way to go.

 

Then I used a premixed drywall mud and mixed that with a little more water until I got to a good consistancy for rolling on to the walls. This process was extremely messy and I was glad that I had put plastic over most of my floor.

 

 

 

And here is what the wall looked like after applying the texture. Not overly rough, but enough to cover the flaws.

 

 

I allowed this to dry for several days. Then I took a trowel-type instrument and lightly scraped down each wall. This removed the big bumps and sharp edges. Then I had to dust the walls because it left a mess. It also left a huge mess on the floor. I almost had to scrap my plastic at this time but decided just to deal with the mess until the color was on.

 

Then I used a deep matted roller and rolled my color (water based paint) over the texture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before with the ugly wall paper - totally bleached out the room

 

After the paint and texture

 

After this dried for a few days (mostly because I was tired of painting) I went over all the doors and trim with a pure white. In these pictures they are still off-white like they were before. I took pictures of this on my real camera and will add them sometime soon (when I remember). I also have some pictures of the wall paper and stuff from before that will show you what a difference the painting made. I will ty and get them on here soon!

 

If you are going to paint a room, paint the trim and doors (or ligher color) FIRST! You dont have to tape because you are going to cover the mess with the darker/main color. I wish I had known this BEFORE!! You live and learn right!?!

 

After re-taping all the walls and floors and painting on the white, I had a mess around my edges. I am not a very clean painter and the tape doesnt work well on textured surfaces. I decided it looked horrible and was a little concerned about how I was going to fix it. If you are doing stark contrasts, the lines should be clean!!

 

In case you cant tell from the pictures, the main color is a fairly dark gray. People seem to think I'm crazy but those who have seen it really like it alot! So I spent a couple hours with this little guy going around all the edges and covering up the white with the dark gray.

 

 

As you can see behind me, it did a fantastic job of cleaning up my messiness!

 

And there you have it, hours of sweat and tears calorie burning all to make the kitchen a happier place to be!