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

Kitchen

Our first major project was the kitchen. Really, major isn't the right word. Colossal. Ginormous. This is how it looked when we moved in.

Those cabinets just make me cringe. The were damp and moldy in some spots, they were just terrible, not to mention there were WAY too few of them. The fluorescent light...ugh. Gross.

I love me some tacky 80's fruit border! And who in their right mind covers up french doors with mini blinds? If you do that in your house, don't. Mini blinds are bad enough (and yes, I have them in some of my windows still so I'm not being a snob about them), but you just can't cover up french doors like that!

Here's what it looked like on the first renovation go-around.

MUCH better. We put in unfinished stock cabinets from Lowe's, and I stained them with a Cabot stain, called "Sangria", which is a really pretty reddish color. Sort of like cherry, but not that red. We painted the walls, replaced the counters (how I wish they were granite) and got all new appliances. The backsplash was super cheap (about $1 a square foot) and I did it myself. I took the doors of the laundry area, and that opened up the kitchen a lot. We were close, but something just wasn't right. I loved the kitchen, but it didn't really make me feel at home. The other major issue I had was that the walls were in terrible shape. They had all kinds of weird texture. I tried to fix them with spackle, but it just wasn't right. I wanted more.

Here we are today.

THIS is what I'm talking about. When I pictured what my little cottage kitchen would look like, this is what I pictured. I kept telling my husband, if you could only see what was in my head...well, then you'd see! Finally, he just gave in and let me go nuts. I started by painting the cabinets black, then distressing them with a block sander so the red would show through.

When I told Hubs I was painting the newly stained cabinets black, I think he died a little inside. When I pulled out the sander and went to town sanding them, I think he thought I'd lost my mind. I assured him I knew exactly what I was doing. I totally didn't. I didn't have a clue how it would turn out, and knew that if I messed them up, our new kitchen would be a total disaster and it'd be all my fault (no pressure, right?). I just went for it, no guts, no glory. I'm so happy I did. It feels so vintage-y now, I absolutely love it.

I still had an issue with some of walls looking nasty, so I pulled out the chalkboard paint.

I think it turned out really well, it covers up the nastiness and is kinda fun. The great thing about the chalkboard paint is you can change your "decorations" so easily. We decided to go for a Dr. Seuss quote for now, "And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed!)".

Had to go with Dr. Seuss again for the other side, "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you." Who knew he was so insightful?

Chalkboard paint one more time. I made this out of a picture frame I found in the closet. I think it longer for the paint to dry than to actually paint this. SUPER easy.

The walls still were a little off, so I pulled out the beadboard wallpaper. We just couldn't afford to put up real beadboard right now, so we had to go with the wallpaper.

You can kind of see it in this picture. This wallpaper is from Lowe's, it was about $15 a roll. It's not as thick as I'd like it, but the one I wanted wasn't available in the store at Home Depot and I was too impatient to order it online. C'est la vie. It at least gives the impression of beadboard, it cost me about $45 to do the whole room floor to ceiling, and it's temporary until I can convince Hubs that we need the real deal (I'm good at convincing, so maybe sooner than later!)

I painted the wallpaper a creamy white (it's called "Deep Cream" by Ralph Lauren). Changing the paint from green to white opened up the kitchen like I couldn't have even imagined. Although I did leave the laundry area green, I think it's kinda fun.

I "refinished" the table to make it look more rustic. By refinish I mean "beat the crap out of it" (more on that later). I still need to do something with the seat cushions, but I haven't decided what yet.


This is my "office", which is really just the end of the counter. The box that the phone is on is a vintage tool box that I got from an antique store for $20. I fell in love with the chippy paint and rust (more pictures of that later).

There are still a couple of things left to finish, namely the trim (which I really hope will be done in the next week or so). We're also considering a new floor when we replace the floor in the rest of the house (in the next few months). But with all the work that's gone on in here, that's minor. So there you have it. My vintage cottage kitchen!