Kitchen changes.

Initially when we purchased the new abode we thought we might be able to just re-finish the kitchen cabinets and get some new appliances. Then we had a closer look, the cabinets were not only horribly dated but were not in that great a condition as we initially thought. Plus add the sticky nicotine and grease and other muck after 30 odd years of someone else we decided to rip them out. Here is a reminder of what they looked like:

Fancy, me think not.

Jeff and I are not loaded with big fat wads of cash however (hmm that would be nice though) and purchasing a brand new custom kitchen was not on the cards, that would be our entire renovation budget right there. So we took to Craig's List, how I love thee... We scored an oak kitchen with WAY more cabinets than we could fit into our kitchen for only $400. Sweet deal. Thanks Jason for the help getting them from south Surrey to Langley. You are a champion. 

Now these 'new' cabinets are currently sitting in our garage and some have made it into the kitchen awaiting to be put together like a big jig saw puzzle, once they are in place we shall begin the epic task of re-finishing them, which I am sure will include sanding and MORE PAINTING, akk. They do need a bit of TLC. Stay tuned for a post on that. But I stray, the task for this week is installing the cabinets. 

The new kitchen is going to be great, especially with our new energy efficient appliances awaiting their turn to take place in the kitchen. I can not wait to cook on my new Samsung 5 burner gas range. 

Jeff ran the gas line in today, another one of the skills that man has tucked away in his tool belt. PLEASE do not attempt this if you have had no experience in gas fitting! Jeff had a stint as a pool boy a few years back and is a certified gas fitter. He got some pipe, some fittings, drilled some holes, shut off the gas and just hooked it up, which was not as simple as I make it out to be, having to run a gas line in from under the house and tie it into the furnace/water heater line. But he did it and didn't blow up the house or anything! So now we have gas. And Harold, no Harold is not the gas range, he is the fridge, not sure why he got named Harold, but it stuck, he's pretty cool though, get it? cool.

Harold.

So stay tuned in the upcoming week or two as I report in on the kitchen install, the search for a single bowl under-mount sink and quartz counter tops.

Get the painting done...

What an epic week of painting and it is going so well! A full seven days of painting walls and then it will be on to trim and doors. Got to get rid of those ugly brown doors! After the ceiling fiasco of last week this week has been smooth sailing. The colours are awesome if I do say so myself. I chose Behr 'paint and primer in one' paints, with stain blocker built right in, you can't even notice the nicotine or smoke smell anymore. I love that paint, two coats is all that is needed, it goes on very smooth and doesn't have a super stinky odour like some paints do, although I would still recommend opening a window when painting.


I haven't been solo on this busy week either, I have a huge thank-you to go out for Grandpa and Jenn. Oh and an even bigger thanks to Grandma whom has been looking after Gavin and Emily. And then there is Skippy, he's just special ;)

My Skippy the Wonder Dog

The house is starting to look more like a home again, after the past few weeks of drywall dust, wall paper stripping, filling holes etc, it is nice to get that paint on. But man, I am a little over painting.

Here are some of the colours we chose:

 Emily's room: Fox Glove by Behr

 Gavin's room: Green Leaf by Sico

Kitchen/Family Room/Living Room, most of the house: Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore

Laundry Room/Main Bath: Wedgewood Gray by Benjamin Moore

Living Room Accent: Mexican Tiles by Rona Collection

Oh and Jeff started laying floor last night, yeah!

I also had a nice surprise when I showed up to the house on Wednesday evening. We have a nice little iron fence that goes around the front garden beds, and then up onto the front porch and it was looking a little worse for wear, really needing a touch of paint, it was on the to do list, but waaaaay far down on the bottom. Well I noticed that someone had painted it for us, I instantly thought perhaps it was Jeff, but then thought 'hells no!', Jeff has way more stuff to do inside, like laying floor and finishing up his TV shelf/nook thing in the family room.

Our TV shelf/nook, not quite done yet.

Who could it have been then? Grandpa of course, master of completing those mystery jobs and showing up with needed things that are on the list like building gates to keep children and wonder dogs in yards, washing walls, running stuff to the dump, and reminding his son, Jeff, that when laying floor you need to remember to cut out a hole for the heat register!

Look at that shiny new painted railing!

So slowly but surely we are making progress, tomorrow is appliance delivery day, cant wait, going to have lots of great images to share. Possibly the last day of painting walls too, really can't wait for that one either.

Epic FAIL! painting day 1

So today feels like a total and epic FAIL. Day 1 of painting and it was such a waste. I was so positive, and things were going so great, until, bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Along with the wallpaper we have popcorn ceilings, a fantastic gift from years past. Initially we thought lets scrape this S^&* off, then in my infinite wisdom and desire to speed up the renovating process I decided to paint over it, freshen it up a little. 

Here is why it needed to be freshened up:

White is new paint, 

yellow is nicotine stains! GROSS

Doesn't that fresh white paint look sweet?

Well, was I wrong, wrong, wrong. You see freshening up popcorn ceilings can't really be done, well it can it just has to be done correctly. By correctly I mean, don't paint your popcorn ceiling with a water based paint, never, ever, ever! It is preferable to do it with a shellac, or oil based paint. Especially when nicotine staining is involved. 

I started in Gavin's room, that went well, paint went on nicely, then moved out into the hallway, again going well, headed out into the living room, did one coat here, then went down to Emily's room, hmm, that was a bit tricky, not going so well here, let's stop for lunch then, after lunch we shall go back to painting.

The first coat of the water based stuff went on well, but as it dried I could tell the staining was coming through in the living room, this is despite using stain blocking paint. So after it dried a few hours I hit it again with some more stain blocking paint/ceiling paint and sha BAM... bubbles, and not just little bubbles that you might be able to get away with, I mean 2 feet by 4 feet bubbles in the middle of the freaking living room ceiling. I had over saturated the popcorn, unwillingly that is, (sorry no photos, I was too pissed off).

You can imagine my reaction went something like this "mother %&(#$() &%*( *%*TU, %*%*(^)@_ %%())) beep, beep, beep, beep", a paint roller may have been thrown across the room, with 10 foot pole attached, also a paint scraper and a few other things, plus some more expletives as well were tossed around. Oh and yes, Jeff did attempt to drop the "I told you so" but that was quickly shut down, I know I was wrong, but I don't need to be reminded of that right now, especially after a bucket of Killz stain blocking paint, 1 bucket of Behr ceiling paint, an old and slightly faded pair of Lulelemon yoga pants, and my afternoon of effort was thrown down shit creek with the paddles!

Have you ever seen me mad? not a fun lady, nice, lovely Sarah turns into a raging mad bull. But a few deep breaths and a trip to Home Depot to throw another $40 bucks in the garbage later I was all good. I spent$40 bucks on 2 spray cans of Homax textured ceiling in a can, which was a total waste of money. But I needed to see if I could solve my epic FAIL. 1 can ended up covering about 1 square foot of ceiling, and most of it ended up spraying all over the room, onto me and I even managed to get it on the window which I still have to clean up. (Pay no attention to the cutesy you tube video of the nicely dressed man applying this stuff, it is utter bull!

Oh, how did I become all good? I did what we were going to do in the beginning, I located the scraper that had been thrown across the house and scraped my afternoon of effort away. Hmm, that was fun, the freshly painted popcorn ceiling came off rather nicely, in large sheets that went 'plop, plop' on the sub floor.

Now we have a smooth flat ceiling that is ready to be painted, again. That is after I get some professional painter person advice in the guise of a visit from the man down the street that shall remain nameless.

Stay tuned for the next adventure in ceiling painting.

This past weekend I became a stripper...

That's correct, for the past three days I have been stripping... wallpaper! I HATE wallpaper, no that is not a strong enough word, I DESPISE wallpaper about as much as I despise Stephen Harper's Conservative Party. It might be nice hmm, let me think... never! In our abode the wallpaper was curling, yellow from years of past owner smoking, flaking and just revolting. It was dusty and holding onto 30 years of someone else's stinkies. It had to go.


We had 7 different types of wallpaper.

Stripping was fun, very satisfying. It was an easy project, but one that required patience.


I needed a few tools:

1. Rubber Gloves
2. Spray pack (the type you might use to spray weeds in the garden)
3. Scraper and/or wall paper removal knife
4. Vinegar and/or wall paper removal solution
5. Hot water

Step 1. Find a corner and start ripping, you might need your scraper here. I was able to rip all the paper down, but this left the pasty gluey stuff stuck on the walls. In the process of ripping I was amazed that the stains had penetrated through the paper onto the gluey stuff beneath!

Start peeling it off.

Step 2. Take your vinegar and hot water and mix it up in the spray pack, then spray onto the pasty gluey stuff, dont over saturate your wall, if you do you will damage the drywall underneath (learnt the hard way), and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. You might need to score your paper too! Scoring would allow the liquid to penetrate through, I chose to omit this step.

Gavin spraying the vinegar
solution on the glue.

Step 3. Take your scraper and start to scrape off the pasty gluey stuff, it should come off really easily. If you find it doesn't then it's time to step it up a notch and use the wall paper removal solution (no more helping Gavin). Mix it up according to the manufacturers directions. Spray on the wall as per step 2 and let it work its magic, magic takes about 15 minutes.

Me scraping away

The magic bubbles!

Step 4. Take your scraper and peel the pasty gluey stuff off, again be careful not to damage your drywall. This will leave a nice mess on your floor, so if you still have carpets or flooring down you might want to cover it up before you begin with drop clothes, in our case the shag pile carpet had been previously removed, so we could omit this step.

Step 5. Clean up. Rinse the residue from the wall with remover solution. Then rinse the entire wall with clear water, and let everything dry completely.

Already the house looks sooooooo much better, I can't wait to paint, that will be fun now wont it? 

Here are some before and after pictures of the kitchen with and without wallpaper. Don't think too much about the kitchen cabinets, we are sourcing some new-to-us cabinets that will be re-finished.

With floral wallpaper

Without floral wallpaper