I'm (still) Painting the Kitchen

It started out seemingly simple enough...just texture the walls and paint over the wallpaper. Brooke wanted to paint our kitchen, the painter said it looked pretty simple, so we began. Well, it's a good thing our painter was a friend and not hired help. Looking at some of the wallpaper he said we needed to peel it off in places first and then paint. We peeled the wallpaper back, I would say to the sheetrock, but that wasn't the case. As the paper peeled, we found our walls were patched with masonite...and masonite with holes in it at that! The holes were made by the rats, who had chewed up the insulation, which in turn made them poop like you've never seen! (Ok, Brooke is embarrassed now) But our walls were a mess, and then, if that wasn't bad enough, one of the rats came running out to greet us! A little handy work with a hammer by our painter friend took care of the rat problem, but the messed up walls were still there.

Well, the short version is, a wall and a half had to be torn down and sheetrock put up, taped and bedded. By the time our painter friend had finished doing that and putting on a coat or two of paint, he had to leave for real work. Did I mention all of this took place in December 2004? Well, ever since then, I have been "working" to "finish" our kitchen. I finally finished the trim and chair rail, touched up a few palces where the texture over-sprayed onto the walls, I painted three doors and painted the paneling over the top of our cabinets. I finished this "stage" a couple weeks ago, but since our Life Group (church small group) begins meeting here tomorrow night, I'm trying to paint the cabinets so they at least look like they are in the process of being painted instead of just sitting there with overspay on them.

So last night, I started painting the cabinets. Holy cow! This is going to take forever!! I really do not like painting, and now I know I REALLY do not like painting cabinets. The plan was to paint them a dark tan color, but once we got the white primer on them, we liked the way the white really makes our kitchen look bigger. At this point, the plan is to paint the top cabinets white and leave the bottom ones their natural dark wood look (after cleaning them with Murphy's Oil). In the picture below, you can see the cabinets with one coat of primer on them from last night. I put the second coat of primer on them tonight and we'll leave it that way for the meeting tomorrow night. Sometime after that (next week?) I'll start puting the nice, shiny, semi-gloss top coat on them. After that, I get to open the cabinet doors and paint the inside of the doors, the trim, etc.

So the kitchen has now turned into my life's work. I guess if I get it finished, my purpose in life is complete (but I jest). Between our busy lives and the simple fact that I do not like to paint, I'm guessing the kitchen project may get done sometime in April. Four months to paint a kitchen isn't all that bad, is it? At this point, I'm thinking that main bathroom would be a good project for 2006!

-Rob