It's Starting To Get Interesting Now

In spite of heavy snowfall and dire predictions from the weathermen last Saturday morning, we faced the weekend’s project list with great alacrity. (Alacrity! I’ve always wanted to use that word. My next favorite word: sagacity.) Before the storm got too bad – and before we were to meet J, our contractor, at the house with his completed proposal – we had to make a quick trip to our beloved Big-Box Store.

On our To Do list this weekend was painting the kitchen. Being fans of Home & Garden TV, we knew that a critical ingredient for this chore is paint. We walked into the store with one color in mind and walked out of the store with an entirely different color in our shopping cart. "American Tradition" had a huge display, and we didn’t count on being seduced by the enormous variety. Time was running out. The roads were getting worse by the minute. The pressure was on. Choosing paint is like foreign policy –if you don’t get it right the first time, you suffer the consequences for a LONG time to come.

Based largely on finding something that would go with our countertop, we picked out "La Fonda Sombrero" for the trim and "Tomato Bisque" for the walls. The wall color looks like tomato soup thinned down with milk. I’m not kidding. It looks just like a soup I make with black-eyed peas, ham, tomato and milk! It has a nice, warm, creamy type appearance (minus the ham and beans). When the sun finally came out the next day, the colors on the wall gave the kitchen a nice, warm glow to it.

We had just enough time to get back over to the house before J showed up. This was the big day. Since we added a few more things to his To Do list, he had to go back and refigure his estimate. His original estimate was much, MUCH lower than the other guy’s; and even with these additional requests, we still expected a figure that wouldn’t make our eyes roll around on the floor like olives.

We weren’t’ disappointed. We gladly signed on the dotted line and were equally as thrilled when he told us they’d start on the job Monday. WHOOPEE!!!

We had no time to waste. Since the kitchen cabinets are being delivered this Friday, it was agreed that a new floor would be first on the To Do list. In the meantime, we could do a lot before that. The kitchen walls were just about the worst in the house. Hairline cracks scored the surface, giving it a crazed look, like the glaze on old china. Rob spent all morning and some of the afternoon filling in the cracks with plaster. After the plaster had dried, he lightly sanded the surface. Sometimes, he’d have to go back and re-apply plaster.

He slathered goop on the walls while I started painting the trim in the kitchen. This color is just a couple of notches darker than what we picked for the walls, which is exactly why we picked it. It kinda reminds me of pumpkin pie before it goes into the oven, which is not why we picked it.
Before that, though, I had to fill in all the holes in the window trim that the shelf brackets had left. There were some nasty gashes in those old boards. After the wood filler had time to dry, I lightly sanded it down. Two coats of the semi-gloss paint also helped to level out the surface.

The fun thing about this project was that we could paint with wild abandon and not care if we dripped on the floor. We got some dandy looking walls out of it, but that old linoleum floor looks like a bunch of kindergartners had been given unsupervised time with paint brushes.

While we were at the Big-Box Store, I picked out a can of stain (MinWax, Special Walnut 224) that I thought I’d just "audition" on a stripped piece of woodwork. We had originally talked about finishing with a light stain; however, there were some inconsistencies in the refinishing process that worried me. (Meaning, a lighter stain would highlight all the places that I missed.) I thought something in-between light and dark – like medium, perhaps – would even things out nicely.

It did. As you can see by the picture, it brings out the grain nicely; and if you stand back far enough – say, to Des Moines – you don’t see all the spots of old paint and varnish that I didn’t get out.

By the end of the weekend, we were tired, virtually snowed in, and very pleased with the progress. The kitchen walls and trim are painted, and the pantry woodwork has its first coat. We picked out a stain for the woodwork, and we officially have a contractor! Planning, work, help from others, and maybe even a little sagacity got us to where we are today. (Ha! I got that word in too!)