Phase One Kitchen

Or should I call it phase 0.5? I don't want to call it phase one because that makes this stopping place sound intentional and it was anything but.

I wrote earlier this week about hanging large art and serving wine at the Christmas Eve Eve party we're having next week. Well... here's how we got to that point!

The jumping off point. Striped on the top, then a farm scene border, with gingham on the bottom. D said he thought it "looked nice". I repeat FARM SCENE BORDER! So... while he was out of town for a training course, this happened:

My parents came over to help me destroy the kitchen tear the wallpaper down. We did the two step process where we pulled off the vinyl of the wall paper then went back and got the paper underneath and glue off. We used a paper shark for the first step. I can't say if it helped much. We tried my sister's steam mop... not much luck there, either. Really, it just took hot water in a squirt bottle and lots of elbow grease.

This was after the vinyl was off and just the paper was left. 

Oh yeah! And we got a new back door (one we could put a doggy door in). I wanted to use the old one for like the coat closet in the entry way but it's too wide for any of my inside doors :( Guess it's off to the ReStore.

Once all the wallpaper was down, we sobbed in to our pillows that I made the fatal mistake of getting in to the sheet rock while tearing down the wallpaper. I've never been the most gentle, careful, cautious person but this was one of my more time-consuming bloopers. But a couple buckets of Spackle later, we were back in business.

At this point, the This Old House tutorial said we needed to apply oil based primer to make sure the sheet rock is nice and sealed. This picture is mid-priming. FYI, everyone, oil based paint does not come out of your hair. Or off your hands. It's a stage 5 clinger.

But that's the last picture of the process... because that's as far as we got! We put a good layer of primer on and then said, "Who are we kidding" and quit for the holidays. Owning a house for the first time puts a different priority on doing it really well instead of really fast. So to avoid a rush job, we cleaned up our mess and called it a wrap.

The view from the living room is much more tolerable in my opinion. 

BEFORE:

Phase 0.5:

Here's where we landed. I may throw some curtains up before the party if I have time. Oh, and also D changed out the ceiling fan for a new light fixture! He even picked out the light fixture! He showed it to me and was like "It's simple but vintage, like you like" :) *tear* I'm so proud!

The next half of this phase will be to get the texture paint up on the walls, paint the trim and walls, add board and batten... this is my inspo pic:

Totally doable, right? Right. Thanks for the reassurance. 

Anyone else applying the breaks on a project until the holidays are finished up?