Projects- Post #1

The Kitchen Wallpaper Project

You know how as a woman once you get an idea in your head it's pretty difficult to change your mind? Maybe you don't, if that is the case you might not understand the next couple posts on here. When David and I first moved into our nice little condo I was so excited, paying mortgage instead of rent every month meant we could update and do little things to our place (like painting) and would be worth it. A year later we finally got around to some of those random things, like removing the wallpaper I had hated from the moment we bought our house. Little did I know it was a project that was going to take 3 months (plus). ***This is a LONG post with LOTS of pictures*** 

It all started in the kitchen...

Wall paper and old cabinet handles

Smile David

... you blinked

gahhhh!

There ya go! :) Thankfully the wallpaper in the kitchen, which also happened to be the most, came off by simply pulling on the edges. 

Lets remove some wallpaper in the kitchen, sounds easy enough right? Wrong again! We had to displace everything and move it to the living room.

scratching off the wallpaper glue, easily took twice as long as taking off the paper itself

There are no pictures of me because I am the one who took pictures and because we were both covered in dust and junk.

We couldn't do this all on one weekend because this was all right in the middle of David's Infection and Immunology block of class. He had a BIG quiz every Monday morning at 8am which meant he was able to do very little except study over the weekends. 

This part behind the stove was one of the worst parts of the wallpaper glue

David putting up painters tape. I was not exactly impressed by painters tape, we had a LOT of bleeding over and it pulled off plenty of dry paint when we went to take it off.

Everything in disorder

Finally getting some primer on the walls

Our oh so cute plastic cabinet pulls that were turning yellow from being touched, gross.

Ugly port light aka the "boat light" above our sink, also notice the lack of handles on the cabinets

New pulls we got offline for SUPER cheap. We only paid about $25 to replace all of them. 

New handles but still an ugly port light 

New light

cute huh?!

More tape. I decided to make the stripes 4 inches wide so that the spacing would be two pieces of paint tape right next to each other. I hoped it would make our job easier and for the most part it did.

Circus kitchen

Painting

We used these mini rollers that were about 2 inches wide. I was really nervous when we bought these because they are so small but they were great and we loved them! Much MUCH more convenient than using a big old roller or a paint brush. 

The Best part, taking the tape DOWN!!

Well except for this stuff. It could be worse but it's still annoying and I don't want to have to fix it.

Tah-Dah!!!! All done

This light is new and it was completely free. Thank you Grandma Johnson for having a garage sale! We love our light cover.

When I went to match paint to the wallpaper that had been in here the lady had to mix it 3 or 4 times because every time it would come out a different color. It had me really nervous and I was scared when we went to paint on the stripes because it looked really dark, BUT I am SOOO happy with how it turned out! In the end she gave me $10 off the can of paint because it didn't turn out quite right. 

I love this picture right here, thank you cousin Sarah. Actually thank you for the other picture I have in the kitchen as well, both have been used and loved.