Painting the Kitchen: What Took Us So Long?

Well, yes. working on the kitchen the last time around was miserable and I wanted to do as little as possible and get on with my life. But still. We’ve been living with woodwork that was just primed and then partly sanded off and marked up with the Irishman’s notes and further damaged from years of primer being used in a way it was never meant to be used. Once you’ve looked at it long enough you don’t see it anymore.

If you can’t read the note, it says “TOP LEFT H/S.” The Irishman’s screwup isn’t the only one in this photo though. I leaned a little too hard on the window sill and made that crack. Okay, maybe that was the Irishman’s screwup, too. The windowsills should hold my weight.

Anyway, I’m not sure if you can appreciate this change from photos, but having clean white trim and walls totally changed the room. Pictured: the way it actually looks. I’ll give you artificially tidy photos when it’s all done. And I’m loving the blue sash. After splurging on wood windows, I may as well enjoy a color you can’t get in vinyl.

I also finally stained the patio door. Because I waited so long to do this job I also had to sand a layer of grime out of the wood. I tried slathering it with acetone and that didn’t work. Loving how it almost looks old. I mean, it’s a sliding patio door so it’s not fooling anyone, but I don’t think it looks hokey like a pastiche either.

A note about this: if you’re going to mix trim colors, the jambs should be your trim color, and the doors or sash the accent color. I made a last-minute change and stained the square stop molding instead of painting it white, and from this angle you can see the sloppiness in my staining work when I still thought it was getting painted. But when the manufacturer drove screws in way below the surface of the wood and the movable panel rubs against this, it would never have looked good painted white. Fortunately you can only see the flaw from this angle, standing over the trash can and looking straight up.

Painting the walls changed the room a lot, too, and not just in ways I was expecting. I wanted the space to be all off-white because it’s small and I stuffed as many cabinets as I could fit into it and I thought that would look bigger. The old paint color came out a bit too far off though. Even though both times I used the same color, the new coat brightened it up just a bit. If you look closely at this photo you can see a difference on the ceiling, where we didn’t do anything. We might have to go back and get it this winter though.

And, you’ve seen the cut-up table top I wasn’t happy with to the right of the stove. The high counter between the living and dining rooms has a piece of the same oak on it, and that one is staying. Now that the old 80’s orange finish is sanded off the top and the burnt saw marks are off the edges, it looks amazing. And again, this wasn’t that hard. I just forgot how much I’d want this.

So, I said finishing this job this fall wasn’t a top priority, but it’s not like before. Finishing just one step of the job makes things actually look better when you’re near the end already. Don’t forget that.