The Kitchen That Unemployment & Boredom Built

Well, not really, but it was the motivation to paint it and change the appearance. There’s only so much Law & Order a person can watch in the afternoon — or so I’ve heard. Um, anyway, this is the way the kitchen looks now. Here’s what it looked like when we moved in:

That said, the very first room we tackled after buying the house was the bedroom. We ripped up the dingy off-white carpet and painted the white (equally dingy) walls a dark blue. Now it is a dark & sleepy cave. (Pictures soon).

Then, we — and when I say we, I mainly mean I — took down the horrible floral wallpaper in the dining room — but hey, different people like different things. I’m sure the old home owners would have described that as lovely floral wallpaper. And I’m just kidding, he helped. If I remember, jwa did a lot of the 2nd coat of paint on the walls. But the stripping — that was all me. And it was nasty. I’m really glad we like the wallpaper that is in parts of the living room!

After the dining room, I moved on to the stairway and upstairs hallway. I believe this was the very first unemployment project, in fact. What was pink and taupe became pale yellow and dark blue. Then, as it seemed probable that a new job wasn’t happening as soon as I thought, I started on the kitchen.

Ah, the kitchen…

First thing, I painted the cabinets a glossy white and attached new hardware. Mostly, I ordered these for all the cabinets and drawers (I think in total it was about 16). They are a lot darker in real life than in the photgraph here. But, for a couple of the drawer pulls, we splurged and ordered really nice artisan ones. We have two lizards on the cabinets under the sink and two moose on a couple of the larger drawers. A look at the price will let you know why we only have four of these pulls.

I believe when I said, “Oh! Sweetie, I found the cutest drawer pulls today. I want to get a few. Let me have your credit card”, I neglected to mention the price. Sneaky! (Pete).

One small, miniscule drawback to these wonderful metal pulls that I love so much, is that they are very dangerous, not as in “oh, ow” dangerous but as in “oh my god! I’m bleeding & I need a tourniquet!” dangerous. The lizards have claws. Sharp, pointy, metal claws. I have gashed my hand a time or two and so has jwa. He, has proclaimed that he really dislikes the lizards and that they are impractical and unsafe, but I know that you have to suffer for art.

With the cabinets done, I moved on to the walls — a bright sunny yellow. I believe it was called squash and it does have a touch of grey in the hue. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Eventually, we want to replace the gray, dingy wall tiles with bright blue cobalt ones and the gray, hard vinyl-like floor with something a bit spiffier. I’m kind of going for a sunny, bright Spanish looking kitchen. Ole!

Here are a couple more before and after shots.

The new (notice the lizards?)

vs. the old (no lizards):

Tagged with: kitchen photos