As many of you know we've been in our new (rented) house for about 5 months now! Everything has been long unpacked, put away or found its new home within our extra closets and cupboards. But there's a lot of stuff that hasn't been done. All the things we say we are going to do when the walls are bare and the rooms feel so big with only boxes piled high in one corner. Paint the bathroom, change the hardware, re-stain the floors, put in new lights, we all have dreams, right? The biggest one for us was the kitchen. When doing our walk through they kind of lead us there last, taking us by the spacious bedrooms and pointing out the retro bathroom. Then we came upon the kitchen...It was huge, with lots of shelves for knick knacks. So many cupboards I have yet to fill and enough floor space for a decent size rug! But the cupboard doors. What happened? (did someone die?) They were gross. I think they had once been painted white, but it had since yellowed. Then for an artistic flare they streaked pink paint over it to give it, texture? Matt says its where they filmed Carrie, although I never agreed it was THAT bad, it was ABSOLUTELY NOT my taste! So we talked about changing it and taking the doors off and sanding and painting and buying new hardware and tile paint and ...we never did any of it. Months went on, slowly we become used to those horrendous cupboards. People came over and asked "what happened?" and we just hung our heads in shame. But during those months I diligently watched Renovation Realities and soaked in as much DIY knowledge I could. Armed with what we learned from TV we set out to tackle our renovation, and we decided to paint the kitchen! Here is my blog version of Renovation Realities: The Jensen Job.
So here it is, where all the magic happens. ;) We first cleaned it up, cleared off the floor and counters (the dishes got put away once dry, maybe that's what Matts headed to do in the pic!)
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Shockingly, the hardest part of the ENTIRE process was WHAT COLOR DO WE PICK!? We literally sat in Ace Hardware for 1 hour and fifteen minutes with about 10 color samples in our hands unable to make a decision. I had used this pic as a guide to what I had envisioned in my head. But none of the colors we saw really matched up to it. The guy there recommended a really cool app for iPhone that I used and it actually really helped, its called Benjamin Moore Color Capture. I took a screen shot of the kitchen I liked and then used to app to select the color I wanted and they recommended one of their paint colors that was most similar. Now granted, Ben Moore paints run like $50 a can and that was my entire budget for the project. I took the sample over to the cheap paint area and found the closest match (the Benjamin Moore one was much more prettier and in my own home I wouldn't have gone the cheaper route).
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Here is a tease I put on Instagram of what our weekend project consisted of. Which did we choose?! After getting the paint, cleaner, sander, foam brushes, paint tray, and rollers our total came out to $54 BUT we had a coupon they let use a day early (so kind!) for if you spend $50 you get $10 off, leaving our total at only $44! We spent the leftover money splitting a burrito from the taco truck across the street! Money well spent.
When we got home (and finished our burritos) we covered the floors and began washing down the cupboards. After inspecting the hardware and trying to remove ONE door, we realized they were too rusty and not worth the effort, so we painted verrrry carefully around it. To wash the cupboards we used a powder SLX mixed with warm water. This one you have to wipe down, then rinse wipe off. This step wasn't so bad!
After cleaning we used a 220 grain sanding block on whatever we planning to paint just to get it ready for the fresh paint. This step also not horrible, but you could just start to feel that burn in your arms. Then we painted!
So here is the first coat going on. Matt and I split up, me doing the bottom cupboards and him attacking the top. We at first tried to just go around the knobs but realized it wasn't going to work, so we took them off.
The original plan was just to paint over the "pink" part but I felt leaving the background white looked a little dated so we had a change of plans halfway through, as would happen in all good reality TV.
I think it looks much better filled in with the mint green. The top part in still undecided. The kitchen cupboards wrap around into the dinning room which is all white with built in bookcases and I just don't know where the mint would stop and white would start. So that's a project for another day!
As in every episode of Renovation Realities you run into a problem! When we moved in there were no doors covering under the sink. There was a spring rod where a curtain could be hung. We ended up finding the doors in the garage a few weeks before and decided we definitely wanted them installed. (We had to buy new hardware for them which we bought around the time we found the doors for this future project.) We were so excited the holes matched up with the new hardware and we screwed them in and got them on the wall without a hitch....except that, the door was not flush against the cupboard and there would be no way both doors could close. So off with the doors, we had to make new holes in the doors, and finally screw them back on.
1 hour later...
I was actually able to save us money from buying new knobs by painting the ones we had before. They were just white ceramic and so I mixed some brown and gold acrylic paint I had to give them a bronze look and then sprayed them with polyurethane and set them out to dry while we installed the doors.
Classic Renovation Realities awkward shot.
And there we did it!!
We didn't kill each other!! I mean, project finished!!! :) YAY!!!
Final Details:
THE JENSEN JOB
Time Estimated: 1 weekend
Actual Time it took: We knocked it out in 14hrs starting at 9am and finishing at 11pm, with 1 burrito break
Budgeted: $50
Spent: ~$50
♥ Feeling the need to justify my kitchen renovation on my food blog, I feel its really important to be happy where you cook. Having a place that's clean and pretty to make the meals that feed your family allows you to add extra love into them, and what better ingredient besides hunger is love? ♥
P.S. Cross your fingers, I just signed my mom and I up for the actual show! :)
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