just before the winter holidays, i started my kitchen update. then i put it on hold after "phase 1" was completed so i could do baking and cooking (because frankly, would it be the holidays without baking?? not for me. phase 1 was ripping out the wallpaper. TWO layers of wallpaper, both of which had been painted over. ugh. i found the both of the old wallpapers behind the stove, without paint, and wow.... not good....
nevertheless, i persisted (love those three words). i pulled out the wallpaper, and the other layer. i cried, i cursed and fought. here in the greater houston area, home builders don't seem to prepare sheetrock properly, so 30+ year old wallpaper plus paint tears your sheetrock. and leaves you with the need to float a LOT of mud.
i spent many a weekend morning like this. mud, several trowels and a french press of dark roast coffee and a splash of cream. luckily, i'm a decent hand with floating mud. the areas with the most sheetrock damage had to be primed with oilbased primer so i could float mud without getting too much water into the paper, causing a huge ripple effect.
i primed the walls and then we decided instead of just paint all the walls, why not put up a fun tiled backsplash up to the bottom of the cabinets? we sought out tile we both agreed on and something modern. i like it quite a bit, even though we started off with some difficulty . i thought starting here would work best:
and not so much. all the measuring and trimming i did first to make it easier on me made it much more difficult. hubby to my aid (very thankfully). after this, we marked and cut each tile. this modern tile was a lot more difficult than i anticipated, but i do love it.
after the tile was up, i started painting. bright, bright yellow. it's really bright. after a few months, i'm a lot more used to it than i was once it went up.
we were all a bit tired and ready for a break. then a few snags hit in january and we're getting it all together again in home repair and updating in the last couple weeks. but....we do live in texas and it is getting HOT already. some of the things i thought would come next are probably going to be delayed a little until we've got nicer temps again. until then, we're waiting on the final approval for our new siding and paint - hopefully today!
and yesterday, a nice addition to the kitchen earlier than i expected. a new stove!! with double convection ovens! it's the last appliance to be updated and i'm thrilled. we all just have to get used to the glass cooktop and now i get to convert recipes to convection or bake regularly.
next up: floors. or the countertops. or the cabinets. they all need updating.
