Kitchen

Let us just take a moment to appreciate what I started with for a kitchen.  Pre-wallpaper removal.

Ah, glorious wallpaper

Yes, it really was EVERYWHERE

Yes.  Two different kinds of wall paper - both black and white. The image is pretty small, so here's a refresher for the wall paper: The one running along the back splash is a black and white checker-board pattern.  The one on the main wall is a black and white floral pattern.  Yes, even in the kitchen there were two different kinds of wall paper.

Once the wall paper was off I had this to work with.  I decided I could live with this up until recently.

A multitude of colour

Ugh

Under the wallpaper there were a few different colours (Pepto-Bismal pink, black, greyge, and a sort of dirty cream colour. The walls are not in great shape.  the kitchen should really just be gutted and re-built from the studs out - but I don't have 30 grand to spend on a kitchen renovation, so I'll make do with what I can manage myself.

You may recall I am trying to find ways to make my home more storage friendly.  Including wanting to build shelving between the studs on the wall in the second picture above.  Though once an exterior wall, it is now an interior wall, and although it *is* a retaining wall, pulling off drywall would not cause any structural issues.

So... the other  day I decided to have a go at building shelving between studs.  I ran my stud-finder along the wall and when I thought I had a spot I could target  to cut a safe hole through I poked my drywall saw in and...

Wait... what?

Yep - drywall nailed right to ship lap.  On to plan "B"

 So, this concept firmly put to bed, I slept on it and determined that my next best plan to get some more simple storage in my kitchen would be to basically build a frame ONTO that wall, put some hinged cupboard-like doors into some of it and make the rest open shelving for simples.

Fine.  If I'm going to make it a feature wall, I may as well do this right.  Some sort of colour for behind the shelving.  The shelving itself with be a very simply Varathaned cedar and then the doors for the cupboards will be white and have a slight wainscoting-type of look to them.

Colour.  This is where I step WAY outside of my personal comfort zone.  I am an earth-tones loving woman, and maybe my house is boring, but my house feels warm and clean with nice light colours.  Go big or go home, right? OK - I went for it... first things first? Patch, sand and primer-coat what i am initially working on.

So much cleaner looking!

So different already!

Right.  The next step was hard.  It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done in my own home. I had made the choice, I had bought the paint... I even poured it into the painting tray...

Holy crap - that is just... so...

I went for it.  I put on the first coat last night... thinking that two coats might be about right. 

Still wet

Dried overnight.  Needs another coat or maybe 2?

Turns out if needed 3 coats of paint to really make it a solid wall.

I spoke with my Mum on Face Time this morning - showed her the current state and talked over ideas... I opted to go with her suggestion for under the cupboards... and I have now painted the feature wall and put a single coat of the second colour I am using in my kitchen on the walls and bulkhead over the cupboards.  The wall behind the fridge and stove will require a day all their own - maybe next weekend - because of the efforts they will require.  But for now, without the benefit of the feature wall's shelving unit I will be putting in, here is the current state of my kitchen:

Starting to put the kitchen back to rights

And yes, the yellow counter HAS to go!

The overall effect is kind of cool actually.  The colours I used are called "Apple a Day" and "Pita Bread" - apropos names for colours in a kitchen, don't you think? The cupboards will be re-painted at some point as well - October or maybe November, but at this stage, my next project needs to be getting the shelving unit all framed in and, while the weather co-operates, getting the external door into my mud-room closed in so that I can get started on my new pantry!

With love across the waters,