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annie1992_gw

My "new" (budget) kitchen

annie1992
10 years ago

Yes, I've been working diligently on my kitchen. Some of the "old timers" here remember my kitchen, with the orange formica counter tops, the broken doors by the washer and dryer, the yellow wallpaper with daisies.

So, now that we have sold Elery's house, we are working on mine so we can put it up for sale. Finally the painting, carpeting, trimming, hanging has reached the kitchen.

So, I bought some paint. It was supposed to be "coffee with cream" but it's more cream and not much coffee at all. I don't like it. Elery says we can repaint but I hate to paint, I don't hate it that badly!

So, before and after.....

Floors before and after:

It's just self stick tile, but the sheet stuff that was on the floor had all been glued down. Sigh. So, on the advice of the "experts" from Lowe's we put down a layer of adhesive and glued the tiles over the existing floor. It was a pain, but it worked, although it took me 3 days to do the entire floor.

Yes, those are actually doors to cover up the alcove where the washer and dryer sits and the cabinet there on the left came from Elery's house, it fits perfectly and now houses my microwave, ice cream maker, crock pot, 6 quart Nesco, coffee roaster, etc.

Counters before and after:

That's paint. Yup. Something called Gianni countertop paint. It goes on with a black primer layer, then three colors dabbed on with a sponge, then some polyurethane over it. It looks pretty good, I was happy and relatively impressed. I don't think it's particularly durable, though, I keep chipping edges and have to touch them up. Looks good, though, or at least better than the vivid orange did.

I learned how to grout and we did backsplash. I scraped off all the old wallpaper first. Here it is, before and after:

We tore out the old barnwood on the bottom of the north wall and replaced it with drywall, much easier to clean, but we had to actually build the wall...

Yes, we did it all. The floors, the backsplash, the counters, the drywall including taping seams and plastering with mud, sanding it down and doing it some more. Paint and some more paint, new doors, new lights. We didn't want to put a lot of money into it that we'd never be able to recoup since we're selling, so we were our own laborers. (grin)

I learned lots of new skills. I'm far better at drywall seams than I am at picking paint, thankfully. And since we removed the monstrous built in orange table in the middle of the room and replaced it with an antique Duncan Phyfe set with drop leaves I have a lot more room.

Funny, nothing tastes any better, but it's sure easier to get around.

Annie

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