goodbye, sad kitchen

Kitchens don't have feelings.  But if they could, mine would be chronically sad.  Poor thing.  She's been cooked in for the past 30 years but nobody's taken the time to properly thank her.  Or really clean her for that matter.

Here she is.  Honestly I feel sorry for old girl.  We've badmouthed her and talked about how we can't wait for her to be different since we moved in.  But who could blame us?  The grease-stained cabinets, dirty flat-finish white paint (in a kitchen?! puh-lease), and permanently stained laminate countertops just weren't doing it for us.

It only took us 9 months (hey, having a baby slows down some projects. or completely stops them), but I'm happy to announce she's on the outs.

Our first priority is to paint the cabinets. We had an estimate done to totally replace them, and once we resuscitated one another from the shock, backpedaled and decided to work with what we've got. Armed with instructions by Young House Love and not much more in the way of know-how (though I think I could draw a pretty accurate aisle-by-aisle map of Home Depot by now), we've tackled this project.  If YHL took 15 days, I'd say we'll be doing awesome to finish in a month.  Here goes nothing!

day 1 - just to remember how disgusting they were. check out the stylish hardware.

day 1 - all doors and hardware off!

day 2 - danny sanded for like, 9 hours. barely an exaggeration.
 i didn't get any action shots because it was horribly dusty.
he said chunks of grease were flying off with all the dust. wow.

day 3 - all door backs primed twice

day 4 - all fronts primed twice

day 5 - first coat of paint on the backs and drawers

day 5 - everything out.

Since then we've painted a second coat of paint on the backs, and two coats on the fronts (the pictures look exactly the same, which makes for riveting viewing.  I'll spare you.)

Next up - sanding the frames in the kitchen (we're leaving them hung on the wall).  This is admittedly the scariest step for us, since I'm picturing feet of dust and spontaneous sandstorms breaking out.  Here we go!