Painting the Kitchen

After we got the granite countertops, the kitchen looked awful with the old wallpaper up. It clashed big-time. So, I steamed it off. We were left with unprimed drywall to look at, but it was better then the old wallpaper/granite combo. That was back at Thanksgiving. Mark finally got tired of looking at the walls and decided he would use his February vacation time to put up the new paint. He figured he'd have 1 day of wall-repair (since wallpaper leaves behind glue and ripped places), and 1 day of painting. I didn't have that same confidence. That's why I'd put off doing it myself. Well, Mark is a perfectionist and found out rather quickly that his 1-day wall repair-job was going to take way more than 1 day. He worked hard all week, tho, and made much progress. He's back at work now and frustrated, so I guess I'll have to pitch in and give it a try after the girls are in bed at night and he's at work. UGH. Here are some pics of Mark in action.

Spackle, spackle, spackle...

The tarps he put up to keep the sanding dust in the kitchen...

Sanding, sanding, sanding...

The girls love to peek into Dad's clubhouse.

Since the kitchen was unfit to eat in while sanding was underway, the girls got the treat of eating on their trays in front of the TV. They loved it.

Rolling on the new color. It's a warm, golden beige. It looks great! But, this is just the first coat and he put it on so we could see where we have to go back and repair more dings and imperfections. Trying to make everything pefect while everything is white (drywall, primer, spackle) is impossible - you just can't see. Adding color makes the imperfections stand out and easier to address. The walls need 2 coats anyway, so it's not paint wasted. Our neighbor informed me he gave up and just painted over his old wallpaper. Mark has done an incredible job!

Brooke LOVES to help, so daddy let her help paint the accent wall under the bar. She was so proud.

So - that's why there's unprimed drywall and blue tarps in back of alot of the pictures on the blog. It'll be done one of these days, but we're not going to rush. We can eat in the kitchen again - until I start sanding. But it makes you realize how much you use the kitchen. We keep bills, keys, coats, shoes, calendar, etc., in there. It's the hub of the house! I think we'll just hire someone for the backsplash and have it done right, in just a day or two. We've served our time just doing the walls.