A Little "Lipstick" Improves My Mood...

This past week, I've been absent from Blogland as I've been absolutely bone-tired from prepping our kitchen for repainting. When we moved into this house 20 years ago, the kitchen was painted two shades of battleship gray - desperately in need of at least a "lipstick makeover" with paint and new door hardware.

As well, there were mauve-colored drapes at windows and doors. MAUVE - really?!?

We promised ourselves we'd paint the room after we moved in, but over the years, we grew accustomed to the ugliness and just didn't see it anymore. That is, until last week. On Monday, I walked into the kitchen, took a look around, and something inside me snapped. Everywhere I looked I saw ...blah.

Contributing to the general ugliness were a couple of those bookshelf metal rails mounted IN THE DOORWAY to the dining room - the kind you stick inexpensive metal brackets into. In this location, even the skinniest shelves stuck out into the door opening, guaranteeing that anyone walking through would clock themselves on the corners. Stupid. In my mind, those had to go ASAP. They'd been painted over by the previous owners, so taking the rails down was a challenge. I dug the paint out of the screw heads and got them out. But there was so much paint on them, I needed a claw hammer to pry the units off the wall. This of course damaged the wall, and now we definitely have to paint. "Yes!"

What followed was the stress of picking paint colors. Marble Man and I have very different visions for the kitchen, but I convinced him to go with bright color. Everywhere! We went back and forth, but I talked him into a warm yellow on the drywall, and cheerful color on the cabinets. He'd wanted white painted cabinets and colored doors, while I wanted a deep color on the cabinets and colored doors.

I did up a section of the room both ways and he decided he didn't want the white after all. (Thank you!) But he thought my color choices were too bold. He was afraid clowns would jump out at him when he opened the cabinets. Funny man!

This weekend, I went back to Lowe's and collected some pastel samples to try. What do you know - they've grown on me.

Now we have to actually knuckle down and do the work. And oh, my, there is a lot of work to be done. Over the weekend I scrubbed the walls and cabinets with Soft Scrub to degrease them. It took THREE passes (gross!) but now they are nice and clean.

The final plan is to do the warm yellow for the walls (the top right yellow sample in the above picture - not the lemon yellows under the cabinet). For the cabinet doors, we'll start on one side of the room with the light blue. As we go around the room, the doors will color shift from blue to seafoam green, and end up at the other end in apple green. The cabinets themselves will be periwinkle blue, almost lavender. Fun!

I'm guessing it's going to take at least a month to get all the painting done, but after living with the grayness for 20 years, we're obviously not in any hurry. (Any of you willing to wield a paintbrush will be treated to a free lunch.) :) It'll be like living in the movie "Pleasantville" - life will be sweeter and the food will taste better. Or maybe that's just the paint fumes?