Kitchen project

I planned a frugal kitchen remodeling project for the 4th of July weekend. The Referee had an extra day off from work, giving us 3 full days to work on the kitchen.

This is what our kitchen looked like BEFORE...

I have never been very happy with the kitchen from the time we first moved in, over 4 years ago. Other than replacing appliances, it has not had much care over the years. The cabinets are old and narrow, and there are not many of them. I like the look of wood cabinets, not white. There is not much counter space either. The one long counter is too far away from any electrical outlets to be able to hold small appliances. The floor tile is old and coming unglued and broken in spots. And, I won't even begin to explain how dirty and cluttered the kitchen always seems to be.

At least 4 times a year, I browse home improvement websites, trying to figure out how to remodel the kitchen. The cost is usually so high, that it has not yet fit into the budget. Then, just over a month ago, a friend posted pictures on Facebook of the work her family has been doing on their new home, and it included painting walls in the kitchen red. I had not considered such an idea before. She also had white cabinets. Her pictures gave me the idea to paint the walls of our kitchen red, and repaint the cabinets white. I already had red dish towels and accents, so the color scheme was perfect for my taste. After discussing the idea with The Referee, we decide that we could repaint the kitchen and also re-tile the floor with the vinyl sticky tiles, all in one weekend. We decided to replace the cabinet handles too. That should spice up our kitchen a bit and make it nicer to use until we really can afford a complete overhaul kitchen remodel.

We went out earlier in the week and shopped for paint colors and cabinet knobs. I decided on a paint swatch color I liked, and went back and bought the paint so we had it in advance. Then, the kids and I started wiping down the cabinets and walls...

I decided to start painting Thursday evening. I am glad I decided to start early, because I immediately discovered a paint problem. The paint in the can was NOT the color I had selected. Instead of ruby red, it was orangy. The Referee took it back to the store and learned that they had just switched over their paint formulas and were having great difficulty creating the red in their swatches. Folks had been returning cans of red paint for 2 days. They gave him another color that was suppose to be real close to what we wanted. It was purplish.

After trying another store, I came home with a pinkish red colored paint that did not work either. Friday morning, The Referee went to a 3rd store with our original swatch in hand, and asked if they could mix up the color we wanted. They did. It was perfect.

I started painting Friday afternoon. I had one wall complete by the time The Referee returned from work. The kids were happy to help too...

Actually, the kids were SO eager to help, that I learned it was much easier to stay up late in the night and paint while they were asleep. I finished all of the red walls and started the white trim before going to bed at 2am.

Even though I had the paint supplies covered....and, I thought I had the kitchen blocked off well enough to keep the kids and the dog out....Jersey #5 managed to "help" early Saturday morning, without supervision...

His work looked more like graffiti to me. He also sampled the paint while he was at it. When I caught him, I asked him what was he doing. His answer, "I paint." He was proud for a split second....until everyone else's gasps and reaction gave him the clear message that he was in trouble. The Referee took the paint roller out of Jersey #5's hand, and everyone stood frozen to see what I was going to do. I grabbed my camera and took a picture. It wasn't funny to me at the time, but I thought that surely it would be funny later.

It was a little setback to have to redo the red on that wall. I had quite a bit of pink to work through before the wall looked uniform red again. We finished the white cabinets after that. A new coat of paint made those cabinets look new again. Changing out the cabinet handles for painted red knobs was a fun improvement. We also replaced a few outlet covers to make them all match.

We saved the flooring for Monday. The kitchen floor had vinyl tile on top of former tile. The original tile was secured to the cement floor base real well. The top layer of tile was coming up and breaking off in places. The Referee scraped the top layer off the whole floor so that we could lay new vinyl tile over top the original. There were a few corners of the kitchen that revealed that maybe there were even other layers of tile in the past. As he was working around the free-standing cabinet, he got the idea to try to lift it up a little so I could scrape the bits of tile that were stuck under it. When he did this, I questioned if that cabinet was even secured to the floor. It took both of us to move it, but it did move. It was not secured to the floor at all. Well, THAT discovery opened up new ideas for the lay-out of the kitchen.

It also opened up wall space that needed red paint. And floor space that was missing a layer of tile....

We decided to move that cabinet over to the wall so that it would make better use out of that wall space and be closer to electrical outlets. It also opened up the space between the kitchen and dining room, making the kitchen seem much bigger than before.

After painting some more, scraping old tile, and laying new tile, we put the cabinet in its new location and arranged the small appliances on the countertops.

The completed kitchen project has totally amazed to us all. It does not even look like our old kitchen. It looks so different...

I find that washing dishes, cooking meals, and washing laundry is so much nicer in our "new" kitchen.