Kitchen - Day 5

It is Day 5 and I am still painting.  

Yep....stiiiiillllll painting.  

I honestly have only been working 1-2 hours at a time, sometimes shorter.  I have primed everything and have put the first coat on half of the kitchen.  I am thinking it will take me the rest of the week.  It is sooo worth the time.  I love it.  It looks so much bigger, brighter and updated.   Thank goodness I decided to use latex paint instead of oil because my hands are constantly covered in paint as well as my floor and counter occassionaly from drips.  

It cleans right up.  

So.  Nice. 

The light doesn't do it justice.  

I have started shopping around for the pulls and knobs I want to install.  Man...those things are pricey.

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Look who is learning how to use the computer. 

He is focused. 

I am tackling the kitchen....finally. PART 1

I have been wanting to paint my kitchen cabinets since I moved into our house 1 1/2 years ago.  I have been scared to take it on myself and didn't want to pay the hefty price of a painter.  On a whim yesterday I slapped on some white paint onto one of my drawer fronts to see what I thought.  Well, that started it.  I am now painting the kitchen.  After a ton of research these last few months, I have cleaned, lightly sanded and started to prime my little kitchen.  I have decided not to use oil based paint because of the clean-up.  I honestly don't have time for it.  I have read many people who have had luck with latex so I went for it.  So much easier.  Tonight was DAY 1.  My plan is to work a little every night after the little people go to bed.  Life doesn't stop to paint the kitchen.  There are still meals to be made and lunches to be packed.  Therefore, I have come up with some easy ways to put it all away until the next night.   It may take me a week or so, but I am already excited for how it is going to look.  Here are just a couple of the many kitchens I adore that have inspired this project.  

Here is my kitchen BEFORE.  

Dirty ugly, yet very sturdy oak cabinets.

You can see a little bit of the cabinets in this pic.  

I didn't take very good before pics.

Here they are with some priming done.  

It's amazing how much 

bigger and brighter it looks already.  

I have big plans for this corner glass cabinet.  

Some fun colorful lined shelves 
with my white dishes.

This is my clean up plan...ZIPLOC bags.  

Works so well.  Into the bags and into the closet.  Out of sight.

Dishes soaking.

Dishwasher running.

Life keeps moving.  

Until tomorrow night little kitchen.

What my kitchen looks like

on a regular basis.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

My weekend, My kitchen, Mr. Home Depot and Me

While my sister and I shopped this weekend at Home Depot, we ended up meeting Mr. Home Depot.  Well, that's not his real name but it could be. He was FULL OF INFORMATION.  We drug him around the store for over an hour asking questions.  Once Tori was done asking all of her flooring and cabinet questions, I hit him up with some of my kitchen questions I have always wondered.  

Like...How can I tell if my kitchen floor tiles' grout is sealed?  This lead him to showing me the commercial cleaner I should clean it with...not anything in the cleaning aisle.  Here is it.

  

It's amazing.  Spray it on the grout.  Let it sit for 15 minutes.  Scrub it with a brush.  Wipe it clean.  

AMAZING!  

Soooo...my kitchen floor has always bothered me but I didn't really know what to do or how to clean it.  I guess over time I just got used to it.  Honestly, I am kind of embarrassed to show these pictures because of how bad it was now that I see how clean it can be.  

WOW!  2 hours of hand scrubbing later, my arms are SUPER sore, but my floor is SUPER clean!  

Everytime I walk into the kitchen, I feel like I have a new floor.

So, here it is.  I forgot to take a completely BEFORE picture, so this picture is half and half.  The part on the left I did a quick trial clean. The right side is the FILTHY side.  Gross!

AFTER

Here is it...all nice and clean.  Such a difference.

  

My second question for Mr. Home Depot was how to change the color of grout.  I told him about my back splash grout that is salmon.  (I am sure to match the salmon colored moldings and fireplace there once when I moved in.)  I hated it.  I have thought about taking a bleach pen to it, painting it, anything to change it.  Well...come to find out there is grout dye!  $11.00 later, I had this little bottle of magic.

Before

Here is my pink grout.

I used a paint brush to wipe on the dye into the grout.  I didn't have to worry about getting it on the tile, because 10 minutes later when it had dried just a little, it wiped right off the tile, leaving my ugly pink grout....white!!!

After

I love it now!  

Before

After

Soooooo much better!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU Mr. Home Depot!  

For $20.00 my kitchen got a HUGE facelift!

Up next on my weekend list, sealing the ugly cracks in the top of our kitchen table that were full of glitter and playdough.  

Followed by a nice fresh coat of white glossy paint.  

so. much. better.

As I sit here typing, my arms are absolutly 

killing me from all the scrubbing.  

Ugh.

I need to go to bed.  

Thank goodness there is no school tomorrow!

I leave you with a picture of two little happy feet wearing his new rain boots I found at an estate sale this weekend...

for a mere .50 cents!