Kitchen Refresh - Project

When I moved into my house the kitchen was painted... well... um. You know when people saying they were going for "Tuscan Style" or "French Country" on home improvement shows. Well I think that was what the previous owners were going for, but they missed. What you see in the first two images is after I removed a wallpaper border that covered the checkered green paint, and installed new lighting, and fan and cabinet hardware, and plumbing, and blinds.

But the the paint seriously did not work; at all. And there were a lot of damaged areas that were just painted over which needed some work. You can see some of the patch work that I did a few days earlier so it had plenty of time to set before I finished sanding it and started the painting.

So after about 2 hours of masking and prepping and sanding the kitchen actually had a more Tuscan post industrial look to it. Strangely it looked better than before I started without even putting any paint on the walls.

Part of my prepping work also included taking down the ceiling fan, and removing the outlet covers, (which you can see in the image abov), and putting plastic all over the cabinets and counter tops.

I actually think that it took longer to prep the room than it did to paint it. But that could be because had help painting the room, but I prepped the room before they showed up. Anyway. I painted the ceiling first and took a break for lunch while it dried.

After lunch we trimmed out the walls and put the first coat on. The photos do not do it justice. The faux plaster finish and the green checkers still showed through lightly.

The second coat really covered everything quite nicely and really made me wonder why the previous owners thought there was a reason to add the faux finish in the first place.

In fact, removing that faux section actually makes the room look a little bigger; and the more golden yellow that I used has a more kitchen feel to it then the previous pale yellow they had used at the top.

You can't really tell in the photos, but I also changed the ceiling fan from a hanging mount, to a flush mount configuration. I still need to repaint the white trim, but I wanted to let the walls dry overnight before I mask it off and finish the room off.