Buh bye popcorn!

We had an awesome summer, we went to Disney World a couple of weeks ago, we hung out, enjoyed the sun and just had an awesome time. I really tried to completely focus on the kids for the past month, hence my no posting/no projects. We really needed the down time, and I'm so glad we were able to have it. However, the kids started school yesterday. Sigh. I'm already missing them. BUT...motivation as taken over and I'm already getting a ton done. Which is good, because my house looks like a war zone. Let me back up.

I loved the kitchen, but let's face it. I didn't have a clue how to do anything when I "finished" it, and compared to the other things I've done, it showed. I worked forever on the cabinets, and I was really happy how they turned out...but they were too always a little too "antiqued". The tile was too busy. And since we redid the living room, the cream in the kitchen had a pinky peach tint compared to the bright white of the living room. Since they're adjoining rooms, it was annoying, not mention ugly. Don't even get me started on how much I disliked the wallpaper. If you remember, awhile back I talked about putting up the nicer, more expensive wallpaper. Much to my dismay, it's been discontinued and replaced with one that isn't prepasted. Not prepasted equals "no freaking way am I going to use it". Ok, so plan B. Only I didn't have a plan B. I had briefly considered putting up real beadboard, but Hubs hates it. He only agreed to beadboard because it was wallpaper, and therefore not permanent. So real beadboard was out. I wasn't really feeling a big change, so I decided to just remove the wallpaper and give the walls a new coat of paint. Easy enough.

This is what happened when I took off a sheet of wallpaper.

The ceiling came off. Literally peeled right off! The walls are fine, it's the ceiling that's destroyed. Hrm...this was really not in the plan. I wanted to do a quick fix: remove the wallpaper and repaint the walls. Everything else, although not exactly my vision, would just have to stay as is. Except now, my popcorn ceiling is peeling off. After a few frantic text messages to Hubs, we decided we'd just scrape and be done with it. It was going to a huge mess and a lot more work, but in the end it would be worth it.

He's not sure it's going to be worth it.

This is the crap that was ALL over the floor, the counter, the cabinets, the dogs, it was EVERYWHERE. Fortunately, the popcorn came right off. We just sprayed it with water and lightly scraped. It did make a gross paste, but it wasn't nearly as hard to do as I'd thought it would be.

This is what it looks like now, sans popcorn. If you decided to take this on in your house, I'd HIGHLY recommend a dust mask. Also, if your house was built before 1979, you should get the ceiling tested for asbestos. Also, do your research. They have all kinds of products that will remove the popcorn, so you might want to go that route. I think I just got lucky that it came off so easily with water.

I finally have the mess under control, but in what I can only think of as temporary insanity, we decided it would a good idea to rip out all the tile and repaint the cabinets. More on that later :P