Prepping The Kitchen

Fourth of July weekend, we spent most of our time prepping the kitchen. We took down the orignial cabinets, which we planned to re-arrange. The first couple came down relatively easy; however, the last set was so wedged into the wall opening that Nathan had to take it apart to get it down. In the process, we actually tore up some of the wall, which we had to patch.

But that was not the biggest patch job. When the guys were working on the garage, they had to disconnect our hardly-used kitchen fan. So, before we could paint or eventually put up new cabints, we had to take that out. And by we, I mean Nathan. It was also wedged into its original space, so it took a while to get it out. We then had to cover the hole with drywall. Once everything was sanded and ready, we used two coats of primer to try and cover up all of the gray and blue. It was about two-plus coats of purple, too.

While everything was drying, we started priming and painting the cabinets. Even after we decided to have Nathan's dad build us new ones, we still finished painting them because we could use them in the garage. And it's a good thing, too, because they don't look as pretty as I thought they would. Here are the lessons I've learned about painting cabinets since: sand the old gloss off and clean them. Watch out for paint globs. Use small foam brushes for the doors.

Back To The Kitchen

This weekend was very exciting for me--we finally have our new cabinets up! Our kitchen looks like a kitchen again, only new and improved. And for those of you who thought I couldn't talk any more about my kitchen, we'll have a week's worth of posts about my kitchen.

The whole reason for starting the kitchen project was my obsession with HGTV. I was watching an episode of Dear Genevive, and someone said something that I completely related to: I hate this room so much, I don't even want to be in here.

That is NOT how you should feel about a room in your house, but especially the kitchen (particularly if you don't really love cooking, doing the dishes, etc. to begin with). To me, our kitchen never felt like it made sense. I could not get the current cabinet arrangement to work with the way I felt things should be. It was dark and gloomy and I would glare at the cabinets because they were so ugly. The layout did not work with my chaotic style of cooking. And we didn't have enough counterspace.

So, armed with confidence from HGTV, I convinced Nathan to spend the weekend working on the kitchen. It would be so easy, we'd be done that weekend or at least that week. Or so I thought...