Looking back I'm confident this project was born in some of the worst circumstances possible. It's winter. We have a newborn. We didn't plan or prepare at all - no food planned out and no idea how much it would cost.
I was able to scrounge together a couple of before pictures from around the time we moved into the house.
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| Old Kitchen |
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| Old Dining Room |
Two weeks ago we emptied and removed our cupboards, purchased a steamer and began removing wallpaper.
After peeling, steaming, scraping and scrubbing every ounce of wallpaper and glue off our walls I vow to NEVER put wall paper up in any of the houses I live in, no matter how cute it is (this wallpaper was NOT, by the way). Painting over paint is easy, removing wallpaper to paint is a nightmare.
Our family crew showed up and helped us rip down the dropped ceiling (it was lower than our normal ceiling by 12 inches) and begin installing our new can lights. Love them.
At this point I was really starting to regret starting this project, because our kitchen looked like this:
We enlisted our home teacher to help Justin put up the ceiling drywall and patch the walls while I scraped the popcorn texture off the dining room ceiling. Getting the ceiling up was the milestone that was most needed. Without the ceiling our house wasn't insulated and our home wasn't warm. We got it up and Justin was able to climb back into the attic and pile the insulation on (he had removed it at the start, and thoroughly despised the cramped process).
Then came the mudding and sanding, mudding and sanding, and mudding and sanding. What a horrible mess that makes.
All of this dirty work thanks to superman. He stayed up so late every night working on this and still got up early every morning to go to work because of my repeated pleas of "I can't live like this." I never did take a picture of what our living room looked like during all of this and I'm kind of glad I didn't - cabinets, dishes and snack foods everywhere.
All of that prep work took the longest. Once the new ceiling was up, mudded, sanded and every inch of our walls was scrubbed to remove every minuscule amount of glue, we were ready to texture.
We borrowed a compressor and texturing gun from my brother and Justin went at it. Once he got going, texturing the walls took less than ten minutes. Texturing the ceiling took decidedly more time. We used my brother's hawk and it turned out beautifully. We let that dry for a day and then Justin stayed up until 4:30 a.m. priming and painting our walls and ceiling. We chose chocolate to complement our caramel cabinets and new white bead board. The girls and I got out of the house for the night to avoid fumes and came home to this sight in the morning:
I was so incredibly excited at this point! One thing I learned is that the beginning stages of these projects take so long and it feels like you're getting nowhere, but then the last few stages go quickly and make a big difference!
I could not wait another day, so I cleaned like crazy to get it ready to put back together after he got home from work. As soon as he got home I helped him mount the cabinets, loaded them up and kept cleaning.
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| New Kitchen |
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| New Dining Room |
Just another hurdle in life. Aren't they all alike? We think they are unbearable in the moment and then, in the end we realize we are better off and it was all worth it.
6 responses:
It's so beautiful! You're going to love it for years and years and years, and that will make the two weeks every so worth it. Thank you for sharing!
Beautiful! Way to go. You survived it. What project will you survive next? :)
It looks beautiful. Justin looked just like Grandpa in the dust picture. Almost made me cry.
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing the pictures and the process and the feelings!
It looks great! Now you should come help us finish up our molding and doors. :)
Liz, a compressor and nail gun are a must for that. Well worth it!
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