Monday, February 8, 2016

Same Story, Different Shade

All the stuff I did? I had helpers.
 One has to quality-check all containers.

I taught a class sometime in there.
 More coming up as they do.

So I took apart everything that was disassemble able in preparation for painting. Those cabinets have been there since the house was built and I didn't even consider trying to move them.
 Turned out the weird backsplash thing is loose. You can see the ancient adhesive which is amber and crumbly. It's always something with this project.
 For about a week my living room looked like this.
Cabinet doors in various states of painting. The fancy fancy paint again which requires at least five days for painting and another few for curing.

 While I was in the changing-colours mode, I decided to spray paint all the outlet and lightswitch covers to match the leg I made for the table. Counter. Breakfast bar. Thing in the kitchen.
 There have been other colours under the blah cream which I am slowly vanquishing. Pretty hideous.
 It's more apparent in daylight and in real life, but the upper cabinets are quite a bit lighter than the lower ones, and not as aggressively green - they're more of an indeterminate warm greyish-taupe with a hint of green.

You'd think that all I had left was to paint the walls and in an ideal world you'd be right except for one thing.

Turns out that back in the Dark Ages the kitchen walls were finished with plaster and then were wall-papered over with some ghastly cloth wallpaper and then everyone who has ever lived in this house since then has applied copious amounts of paint to said fabric wall-coverings but the thing is, it seems wallpaper paste lasts only so long and the stuff was barely adhering to the walls.
 And now it's mostly off. Except it was CAULKED to the ceiling and that isn't coming off very nicely.
So I've been educating myself in The Ways Of Old Plaster Walls (which it seems are a whole different beast than new plaster walls) and I think I have a plan which unfortunately isn't as quick as simply painting (it won't stick if I do that) or even simply priming even with an oil-based or shellac-based primer (which won't stick either). I have to wash the walls, apply joint compound, sand it, wipe it blah blah blah and only then after letting the primer cure for at least a day, will I be able to paint.

Meanwhile: mess.

At least I don't have cabinet doors all over the floor though.

1 comment:

amyfibre said...

Whew! So glad you had good snoopervision for this project.

I think you'll be glad to have these posts to go back and reference later. You've done a helluva lot of work!

And yes, that flesh pink under the cream? Hideous!!!!