Redecorating Progress

This is how the kitchen looked the first time I saw it. I think the wallpaper was original to the house...it ran under the cabinets and under the heavy ceiling tray thingy... It was definitely dated! (the house was built in 1978 I think!)

We are a tall family with four of us measuring in at 6'3", so the ceiling was very low and made it hard to breath! Plus, the walls were dark and paneling dark... BUT, the cabinets and counters and back splash are all white. That was nice and we wanted to keep that...




So one day our son was visiting and he informed me that the ceiling box could easily be removed and he reached up and showed me how easy... a section came down... leading to the removal of all the wood part of the box and the plastic sheet things - this lead to our ceiling being opened up and looking like this...



I loved the openess of it and the area above the cabinets... however, we had to remove the "beautiful " exposed florescent light fixtures... we had several people come and give us estimates on replacing the lights with canned lights. I'm talking highway robbery! YIKES! So, we held off for a few months... then someone came into our lives who was willing and able to fix our problem at a price we could deal with.

Meanwhile, we removed the wallpaper and had to have the walls resurfaced - something they call "skim coat" or something like that. Basically they came in and put a thin layer of sheet rock all over the wall to smooth it out and make it nice.

After that was done I needed to paint... and thought that I was priming the paneling ... nope not what I thought... after I painted the "primer" on it and then the paint it began to roll off the wall - not a pretty sight. So, I had to strip the walls, sand them and then prime with the right stuff and then paint...




After all that work, it turned out like this... looked much nicer I think!


So, finally, I got the ceiling painted to cover all the discolored orange stripes and holes in the ceiling... and this is what I got!








I think it looks much nicer - brighter, cleaner, um, just better. Our next project will be to update the appliances ...
Later I'll show you the rest of the house and the changes we made. The former owner came by one day and he was amazed at how much better it looked. He had no idea what a difference it would make to remove the light box.