Doin' Projects With Dave

So, for the past three weeks, Natalie and I have been slaving away, trying to avoid potential lawsuits by guests to our home who become disoriented in our kitchen, fall to the ground, and seriously injure themselves as the result of the "busy" (understatement of the year!) wallpaper in our kitchen. Below is a nice "before" picture of the kitchen.

This is another "before" picture of the kitchen, just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the wallpaper problem we were dealing with! Some people were convinced that if they stared at the right part of the wall for a long enough period of time, a 3-D unicorn would appear . . . fact or fiction . . . I guess we'll never know.

And here's a "before" picture of Natalie . . . doesn't she look excited to be finally taking down the wallpaper? She is just really risk-averse. If it weren't for all the potential liability arising from the wallpaper, I'm pretty sure she would have kept it up there.

Unfortunately, after about four hours of scoring (and I'm not talking about soccer on Saturday morning), steaming, scraping, and sweating; we had removed the panel of wallpaper that you can see below. Please refer to the first two pictures above to get some perspective on how our collective spirit must have been at this point in the project.

So, we decided to repair the damage that we had done with some spackling, and just paint over the wallpaper. Now, I know what you're thinking, but before you shun us for copping out on our project, I would encourage you to read "Home Improvement 1-2-3," an authoritative home improvement resource manual, which will assure you that this is what the professionals do.

After getting all the spackling done, we decided we needed a break (a week-long break). Here is Natalie preparing a celebratory feast (courtesy of Papa John's)!

After spackling every conceivable part of the wall, it was time to tape, tape, tape! As a side note, I will give a little home improvement advice. Never tape! And certainly, never tape, tape, tape! Inevitably, the tape will cover what you want to paint, and fail to cover that which you don't want to paint. Get one of those roller gadgets from Home Depot (or Lowe's) to do your edgework. Moving on . . .

At this point, I must say that the hardest part of the entire project was working around the skylights, which look really nice, except when you are looking up at them after having just taken a tumble (with a razor blade in hand) from one of the swiveling kitchen chairs that you were trying to balance on top of while taping one of the hard to reach corners. I reiterate my earlier advice . . . never tape!

After we got all the tape up, we started priming the walls. Honestly, even the primer was such an improvement over the old wallpaper, that we almost decided to just stop after we got a coat of primer on the walls, but that really would have been copping out. However, we did take another week-long break after priming the walls. We just wanted to give the primer a chance to dry.

Finally, after we felt that the primer had sufficiently dried . . . we began the process of painting the kitchen "Cake Stand Blue" (I'm not joking, that's actually the name of the color). Only Martha Stewart could get away with giving such a ridiculous name to a paint color. Throw her back in jail! But, I must say, this was by far the most rewarding part of the project!

And so, after three arduous weeks of de-wallpapering (one panel), spackling, sanding, taping, priming, and painting; the kitchen is done (for now).