Kitchen Diaries

  I have got myself tucked into a big project.  I have given myself 3 months to do it because I will scare myself otherwise.   I started about a month ago by re-grouting all of the tiles in the kitchen.

  Now I have decided to repaint the whole kitchen including the doors and all of the solid oak cabinets. At the present time it is a varnished and the varnish has worn away in some areas.  They are beyond tired if you ask me?

If you don't believe me, take another look.  

 
   Those are the new knobs on the right.  I tossed the old ones out last year.  You see I have had to move up slowly on this project.    I had to get to the place where it would be acceptable,  maybe even gratifying to do it.    It seemed daunting at first.

  There are actually 22 separate cabinets.  Each one must be sanded , primed 2x and painted 2x.  All the sanding is being done by hand because I couldn't get the hardware off.   The long baton hinge has sort of been plunged into the wood.

I imagine that the former owner found these cabinets on sale somewhere and he sort of cobbled them together.  There are huge gaps between some of them and the wood is quite rough under the varnish.   I have had to caulk between cabinets.

 Sometimes I think I am nuts to go to so much trouble but then I think of the cost of new ones that wouldn't even be solid wood these days but composite.  

Here is my system for taping off the hardware.   I put the blue masking tape around the tips and slide a piece of stapled paper up and down the shaft to keep the paint off of it.   It takes an artists brush to get the wood painted on the shaft and an artist's brush to do the wall color this close to the wall.  (  I still haven't decided if I am going to paint that air vent the color of the wall.)

    The color for the wall contrast to the light cabinets is sort of a mouse grey called Grimoire ...but I like to call it taupe...(almost the same animal).   How about dove grey..   that sounds better for a kitchen.   I don't really want to associate "mice" with "kitchen".


I am happy to report that one of the white entry doors is done on both sides, the other lacks a few touch ups.  The wall is completely painted above the cabinets now.  

 I only have 5 more cabinets to do and 5 more drawers.  Then I will need to deal with the rollers that are all skew-iffy in about half of the drawers.   I have decided to paint the runner along the tile with varnish as I think it will withstand more wear.    And finally, I would like to replace the cooker and the fan.

  This is the new look with the beige cabinets.

I think they are turning out rather well...but the time it is taking  has made a huge dent in my social life.

However , I intend to remedy that next week which is "the birthday week".   I intend to celebrate my old age and declare a war on ageism.    Stay tuned.