I know many of you are home improvement voyeurs, as I am. This one goes out to my fellow twisted paint-chip droolers and paintbrush fondlers.
It’s nice to know we’re not alone in our perversions. Voila:
Backstory: Some of you might recall that over a year ago, I horrified my family by having a very sudden home improvement seizure in the kitchen. I literally came home one day, looked at the knotty pine cabinets and beadboard (with the wretched iron hardware that looked drilled on by a drunken blacksmith), and imploded in an acute internal primal scream. Which then triggered my yanking off random pieces of unbearable peachy floral wallpaper and slapping $150 worth of BIN primer on the 1950s on every surface I could reach.
Then I sort of remembered that I had, you know, kids, and a job, and a sick dog, and no disposable income, and all that other stuff that adds up to be the Good Reason that most people in my situation wisely, wisely leave their kitchens alone.
And so the kitchen stayed much the same for a year, until the past two weekends, when David amazed me by upping the ante, AND TAKING OFF THE CUPBOARD DOORS before continuing the paint job (something about “doing the job right,” which is not a language I am fluent in).
I did not come from a family that “did jobs right,” which is why I once found my younger brother, then 11, weeping in frustration on the bathroom floor as he tried desperately to reattach the always-busted ceramic toilet paper holder fixture back to its hole in the wall with Elmer’s Glue from his pencil case. Elsewhere in our home, my father read the paper and my mother gabbed with her mother on the phone. Possibly one of the most heartbreaking sights I have ever witnessed.
(My now-grown brother’s home is lovely, BTW.)
So enjoy the work in progress, you pervie kitchen peepers, you. (Leigh: Yup, we are going to leave those top cabinets open shelving, to add V2: Voyeuristic Value.)
Ooh, yeah, you know you like it like that. Oh, yeah. You know you like to watch. Yeah! Whip me with that Whipple Blue! Flog me with that Weston Flax!
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }
Purty.
Oh also? Why not leave the upper cabinet doors off? I mean, I realize this would require that your dishes always be neat, but I kinda have always liked that look. Airy. Or something.
It’s coming along so prettily. I saw this show where they cut out cabinet doors and put glass/plexiglass so that you could see into the cupboards.
Drool.
We did ours recently too – hurrah for no more bare wood! I love the blue. Whipple good.
apparently we had the same blacksmith. I have only mastered changing the hardware, so I applaud you…and David. I heart your beadboard.
Gorgeous! My husband and I had to hire a third-party mediator to agree on colors (hand to God, but she was totally worth it).
Good for you for getting, if not the kitchen of your dreams, at least the banishment of the kitchen of colonial horror.
I’ve never been to Cape Cod, silly Pacific Northwwesterner transplant that I am, but that blue coupled wit the beadboard is what I imagine a place on the Cape looking like. Maybe add cascading fifties from the sink…
Yay! It looks great!
If the home improvement industry only knew how much of it’s business it owed to “PMS initiated redecorating projects”…
Ooooh…that’s nice!
Oh baby, you know how to turn me on.
It’s the yellow that I dream of at night, all breathless and bothered.
Beautiful, my dear, just beautiful.
Wow, it looks lovely! It is amazing what a little bit of paint can do!
This gives me hope that I will someday be able to finish our house projects, despite the face that we have children.
I like how all the orifices are open and inviting to whatever I want to fill them with.
Where’s the dishwasher? It’s not really a money shot without a dishwasher…
Very nice … I have many rooms that need to be “done right.” Maybe when the kids move out?
oh my god!!! it looks great!
looks great… wish we had the money to do anything half decent looking to our kitchen
i always liked your house…it felt so homey
What color did you paint the walls? We are in the midst of drywalling every wall, along with priming and painting. Awe-some. I need one more color to pick out and I’m liking the color on your walls.
My what nice pipes you have…
Love the idea of the open shelves.
Ok, Spot. You know why that’s funny? Because it’s true. Ask my husband why we have no bushes in the front yard. (His answer would be PMS plus unfettered access to giant snippers and a small saw.)
Looking sharp! And seriously? I could while away hours dreaming of backsplashes. Mmm, mmm, mm.
Ah, the Benjamin Moore historical palette. I know it well.
There is nothing sexier than Weston Flax, baby. Except for, perhaps, Putnam Ivory, the colour of my own made-over kitchen cupboards. They’re hot! And sticky; mostly from the kids’ popsicle-stained fingers. But still.
The big question is, does Mrs. Kitchen like her new digs?
Beautiful color choices…love the blue!
First? It looks lovely, and fresh now, although the pine cupboards in your before picture didn’t bother me overmuch, since my kitchen fantasies tend to revolve around naked wood.
Second? You’re driving me crazy. I want to remodel MY kitchen!!! Unfortunately, I’ve been instructed that I must finish all my other home improvement projects before I can start painting, even if the kitchen IS so white you can’t even think a dirty thought without staining the walls.
Third? How do I make my already sweet and wonderful American husband Canadian as well, so that he accepts crazy remodeling attempts as part of who I am, and finishes them out of the kindness of his heart? He already appreciates good beer. What’s the next step?
jenn, I too, till be enterting the Seventh circle of Hell, known as home do-overing. Close on my first house Aug. 27th.
Hold me.
P.S. Your kitchen looks fab so far. Much better!
Oh. My. God.
It is SO good to see that someone else had the same kitchen redo impulse I had. My cabinets are, at the moment, half stripped and half chipped primer, left over from before the summer concert season slammed me beyond repair. I’m hoping that by October D will ante up and help get me in gear in the same fashion.
holy crap. I have not laughed that hard in months….thank you.