The last two weeks I’ve been spending most of my downtime working on a small kitchen reno (well the last two weekends!).
When I first bought my house I had seen another house for sale in my development and thought their wallpaper was cool, I liked the stripes because they made the walls feel taller, going from 12′ ceilings to 7′ 5″ ceilings I felt like this house was crushing down on me so anything that made the walls feel taller was a plus in my book. I’ve taken down many wallpapers in the past and knew it’s not something I love to do so I got a brilliant idea (or what seemed like a brilliant idea at the time) to use a fabric tape, the beige color would go with the beige walls so off I went using a laser level installing strips of tape to create vertical lines.
Here is the inspiration photo with their striped wallpaper:
Here is how my kitchen looked when I put in an offer to buy the house:
Here is how my kitchen looked after i used permacil tape on the walls, crown molding, new appliances and wood floors:
Fast forward 7 years and I’m sick of this look (actually I’ve been sick of this look for about 3 years but recently I finally had it and decided to do some updating!). So last weekend I decided to take the stripes down and paint the walls, easy right? First strip of tape I pulled off I just stared at the wall in horror, this was worse then wallpaper WAY worse!
See that off color stuff? That is not just glue from the back of the tape but it also pulled the paint right off the wall. Ohh easy fix just sand it right? NOPE!
I started out hand sanding this only to realize this wasn’t going to work so I grabbed my neighbors electric sander, started down that road only to see I was not getting very far at all going this route. What was my only option? I had to skim coat ALL the walls in the kitchen, holy project!
So it took me last weekend to pull all the tape off the walls then skim coat them, here’s an after of the walls after they were skim coated, smooth as silk!
Two weeks ago I picked out a new “greyish” color I really liked, I tested the color out on two out of the 6 walls in the kitchen, things looked good so during the SW 40% off sale I scooped up this new wall paint (along w/some other paint for the cabinets, stay tuned for that project!). I came home and painted the kitchen this new greyish color, first two walls things looked great, third wall hmm not really liking this color so much by the fourth wall I was absolutely hating the color, this looked grey on the first two walls but the second two walls I felt like I was in a little boys blue bedroom what the heck??? Soo I stopped painting and re-evaluated my choice in color, I knew I still had some paint in the basement left over from my bedroom, SW Wool Skein one of my absolute favorite colors! I finally got the whole kitchen painted in that color this weekend and I’m loving it (why didn’t I just paint the kitchen this color to begin with?) The photo on the left is the gray that looked blue, photo on the right is the SW Wool Skein.
Of course the walls aren’t the only thing I’m working on in the kitchen here is a sneak peak at what else is going on or what will be going on! Check back for updates 🙂
Why yes that would be board and batten (I loved the board and batten in my downstairs bathroom so much I decided to do it in the kitchen too, although this one is slightly different then how I did the bathroom one) more on this once I have it completed with a new bench I am building!
😉 Can you guess where I will be using that fabric? That project is happening this upcoming weekend!
And of course my absolute all time favorite back splash ever is “marble subway tiles”. I so can’t wait to start that project!!
So this small kitchen reno is what I’ve been preoccupied with for the last two weeks! Check back for updates as I progress with the kitchen! ** Sorry for the crudy photos 🙂 I was lazy and didn’t feel like fighting with my camera (it’s held together by duct tape the battery plate broke so the batteries fall out grrr) so I used my cell which takes terrible photos!
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