The Kitchen

The kitchen just after Dustin bought the house

The dining room just after Dustin bought the house

Dustin painted over the blue color and the border and

changed out the lacy curtains

After Dustin painted

After Dustin painted and his new curtains

After we removed the popcorn texture from the ceiling

 

 The walls orignially had wallpaper in the kitchen which had been painted over

with the blue and then the yellow Dustin painted - so we had to remove the

paper and prep the walls to receive spray on texture to match the rest of the house

 

A suprise we found when we removed the wallpaper - 

plywood!  We put several coats of mud over it rather than

removing it and then doing new Sheetrock work

Once all the wallpaper was removed the walls were a little torn up, since the wallpaper ripped up much of the Sheetrock paper.  Since we had bubbling problems when we just applied mud to the paper in the living room we decided to see if we could avoid that problem.  Dustin bought some 3M spray adhesive which we sprayed over all the paper that was exposed.  As the spray cured it formed little balls with the lose paper.  So we waited about 10 minutes for it to dry some and then using a Sheetrock sander we went over the little balls which knocked them off.  This proved to be a genius idea, because when we then did the skim coat of mud over all the exposed paper we did NOT have a bubbling problem!

Once all the wallpaper was removed this is what it looked like- you can see

how the Sheetrock paper is torn up

In the kitchen we also had some corners we had to re-tape.  Between removing the wallpaper and maybe air getting behind the old tape, much of the tape in the corners no longer laid flat like it was supposed to.  We also had to add tape in the corner between the ceiling and the plywood soffit over the cabinets.

This photo documents a big moment.  At this point the walls and ceiling were

preped and primed - ready for texture.  This was Christmas day and the first

time I used the kitchen since we moved to Brownwood.  Because of Dustin's

work schedule we were not able to make our usual trip to see family over the

holidays, so we made our own mini feast of ham, potatoes, veggies and cookies.

(I kept the plastic on the cabinets to protect them when we did the spray texture.)

After the walls were textured the plastic came down

 

After the walls were textured the plastic came down

 

Then it was time to paint - we used the same color that we used in the 

livingroom and hallways

The paint is up

 

 Once the paint was up I used the Minwax to shine up the 

cabinets in the kitchen - this shows the difference (the left

is before and the right side is with the Minwax)

We installed all new light fixtures in the kitchen and

dinning room

Another angle...

 You might notice that we did decide to leave the paneling in the kitchen there were two reasons for that.  One was that removing the paneling as we found with the entry hall and the living room left ALOT of sheetrock work behind.  The other reason was it does act as a wall protector for chairs banging against the wall which is bound to happen when we get a real dinning room table that seats more than two.  However since the paneling is really dark and our goal has been to lighten up the house since it has so many dark finishes I decided to paint the paneling white to match the base boards throughout the house.  First I primed the wall with Kilz and then I just painted over it - it only took one coat of Kilz and two coats of paint.

I then made some new curtains for the kitchen.  This was my cheap attempt to

make roman shades on a budget - for less than $20 I made the curtains for

the bay window and the curtain by the sink window

This shows the other new light fixtures in the kitchen

It feels good to have a fully functioning kitchen.  However the kitchen is not yet completely done.  I have some laminate that looks like granite that we will use for new counter tops.  When we do the counter top this will probably also mean a new sink and new faucet.  We will also be removing the laminate from the wall between the cabinets and current counter top and replacing it with tile (at least that is the plan right now).