Just Needs a Fresh Coat of Paint

The title of this post is a phrase that I have both heard and used a lot!  When we moved into our home, we knew that we wouldn't have the budget to make any huge changes to the house as a whole, so we picked the room that needed a gut job the most (bathroom) and then proceeded to give the rest of the house a fresh coat of paint, which was all our budget could handle.

But in this house, the amount of work needed to get to the fresh coat of paint has been ridiculous!!  We're talking much more than your typical sanding and spackling.  With that said, here is how we arrived at our fresh coat of paint in the kitchen...

We started making changes to the kitchen the day we moved in.

Yeah, the drop ceiling came down within the first hour.

And we were left with this.  I can hear the buzzing of the florescent lighting just from looking at this picture, can't you?

We also unscrewed all of the add-ons left by the previous owner.

And I chiseled the bar lamp shades (right) off of the light globes.  It wasn't pretty, but it was an improvement!

I don't think I took a picture, but I discovered that the top layer of the wallpaper came right off, leaving the tan backing paper on the wall.  I decided that looked better than the faded strawberry wallpaper, so we lived with that for a while.  The kitchen sat the way it was from September until March, because we knew there were things we had to get done before we could ever paint.  The first being the lighting situation.  

In addition to the flourescent lighting and the oddly-draped bar lights, we had this little beauty blocking the way for us to close up the wall so that we could paint above the cupboards.  When Jared got his bonus in March, we decided to get the electricity taken care of professionally. 

But before we could hire the electrician, we had to deal with the tiles on the ceiling...

...and the final reminder of the drop ceiling.

I was so giddy by this point that I couldn't contain myself.  I almost posted this picture to facebook until I realized that it wouldn't impress ANYONE except myself! I mean, really, who would think that this could POSSIBLY be an improvement?! 

So the electrician came and went and the ceiling looked like this....

...and this...

...and this...

...and this....

(The whole time that I was ripping the tiles  off the ceiling, I couldn't understand why the previous owner had used them.  It was literally under the final tile that I found this hole to the ATTIC!)

We realized that there was just too much patching to be done, so we also sought professional help to get some drywall hung on the ceiling.

Out with Cover the old, in with the new!

By this point we had also peeled off the backing paper from the wall...

...revealing some awesome aqua paint.  That really got me itching to haul out the paintbrush!

 But it still wasn't time for that fresh coat of paint.  There was much mudding...

 

 ...and sanding...

 ...and gnashing of this germophobe's teeth.

 And finally, after our most successful round of texture-spraying to date, we were finally able to give the kitchen that fresh coat of paint...

 A couple more before and afters.  I don't have time to fiddle with any fancy photo layouts, although I wish I could, but I'm sure you can pick out the before and after.

 (I'm not spending money on a new backsplash until we remodel the kitchen, which won't be for a LONG time...but I thought it was amazing how much the paint brightened things up!)

And one more time, in case you forgot...

:)