Bye bye flat and yellow..

Mom came over this weekend and helped me paint the kitchen.  Besides fixing up the walls a little, I've been stripping paint from some of the woodwork.  You can see a little bit of that in the pictures, but I'll reserve that process for its own post when I'm done.

Here's the kitchen when I bought the house:

The walls don't actually curve, that's a combination of three photos taken from the same angle across the kitchen

See that wallpaper border up and on the right?  It's held up with GORILLA GLUE!!!

I tore that sucker down.

I don't think you need pictures of my primer, but you can check out the snazzy paint I (finally) picked out, it's Eddie Bauer/Valspar Travertine and I chose it after painting my friend's living room with the same color, and then I plan on using Benjamin Moore Icicle for the trim and cabinets.

After!

Of course the Travertine isn't nearly that brown, this is a picture of it in my kitchen, with a sample of the Icicle:

By now it probably looks like I have no idea where I'm going with all this, but trust me, there is a method to my madness.  I'll share a few inspiration pictures before I head off to bed for the night:

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(If you have the source for this one, please share!) 

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Long time no blog!

Contrary to what my blog makes it look like, I HAVE been doing some work.  Mainly on the kitchen and a little bit tackling the jungle in my backyard.

The area in the corner of the kitchen where the old furnace was went from this:

 

to this:

First off, in the kitchen, I tore down a bunch of crumbling plaster over the old furnace chimney.

A lot of people thought I should finish exposing the brick and seal it.  I didn't like the look in my kitchen,  as opposed to say, a modern loft or townhouse in the city.  It just didn't work for what I want to do here.

So I bought some small pieces of drywall.  Home Depot sells them in manageable 3'x3' (I think?) squares so I didn't have to cut down a full-sized sheet of drywall.

I tried several methods of measuring the space that stuck out where I couldn't break up the concrete around the vent hole into the chimney.  I tried lipstick, I tried brown paper.. in the end I just kind of guessed at it and kept cutting it back 'til it fit.

 


Before I put up the drywall, I filled the space around the old pipe with spray foam insulation and primed EVERYTHING with an oil-based primer.

after that I smoothed everything as much as I could with patching compound and decided that eventually, I'm just going to frame the whole thing in with drywall.

Back on again!

Today I started working on the house again, and it feels gooood.

I picked out some paint samples at Lowes and put them on the walls and got started removing more painted over wall paper.  Using my handy-dandy thrift store purchased steamer, it came off like a candy wrapper, no problem, right?!

Wrong.

The wallpaper was applied directly on top of the drywall paper.  So off it came.  I've done a little research and learned that I will probably have to put a "skim coat" of drywall compound over it to give it a new surface.  That is, if i don't want to put a thin layer of drywall over what's there (and I don't.)  Luckily, my research didn't stop there.  I then learned that if I don't want bubbles, I'd better SEAL the paper first before applying any compound.  

Meanwhile...

My hero was re-caulking my tub.  Whoever re-did the bathroom last removed some of the walls, put drywall on top of others, and installed a tub/shower surround over PEG BOARD.  Seriously.  I have pegboard walls.  And, of course, painted over wallpaper.  

The surround had a border of caulk strip between it and the tub and it was pulling away, leaving an adhesive exposed to collect dirt and other nastiness.  Gross!  He peeled it off, cleaned up the messy caulk underneath, and put down a nice, clean bead of caulk like a pro.  

This is still a temporary solution, as I have every intention of taking it all down and putting up a proper tile surround.

P.S. Do not EVER do a Google Image Search for "rubber caulk strip" without turning safe search ON!!!

Fridge clean up

Cleaning my fridge should have been a one-day job.  I think I didn't look at it very closely:

I took it apart, hosed the insides off in the backyard, then dropped them in a tub of hot water and bleach. I took a bucket of that bleach water and rinsed down the insides and outside of the fridge, only a magic eraser would get rid of some of the spots on the white surface, including on the rubber seals. I used a Shop Vac to clean off the top, back, and underneath. Then I used an all-purpose cleaner and pieced it all back together.