Through the Knitting Lens: My Kitchen has Been an Intermittent Mess (and my family room, dining room and pantry...)

We have been plodding away at redecorating our kitchen. And when I say plodding, I mean weeks and weeks of painting, thinking, cleaning, painting again ... and this is after months and years of contemplating, thinking, planning, scratching the plans, contemplating, thinking and planning again ... we move slower than almost anyone I know. Slower to act only than those who actually never do act.

Let's lighten it up! And, if you are a "pictures-only, please," sort of reader, scroll to the bottom of the post to see our messy, colorful redecoration.

Last summer (yes the summer of 2017), my husband had a wild idea one sunny, Sunday afternoon. "Hey!" he said, "Let's go to Fabric Depot today! I'll bet you can find some kitchen curtain fabric there!" I looked at him and his three heads. A husband saying this? I really did think it sounded fun to drive down to Fabric Depot. And I had been talking about -- at the least -- putting some curtains up on the kitchen windows, even if we did no other fresh decorating in the 13-year-old kitchen. I wanted to try sewing some roman shades.. But I hesitated as my husband stood there, waiting for an answer; what was he up to? I had to admit that it was a nice day for a longish drive. And there would be fabric at Fabric Depot. Loads of it, all smelling all fabric-y and stuff. Mmmmm.... (Yes, I know the smells are probably dangerous chemicals. Don't ruin this for me...)

If there was an ulterior motive in my husband's idea, I decided I didn't care. The smells were enough for me. I put aside any suspicions. "Let's do it!" I said cheerfully.

A yarn bomb appeared on our truck as we shopped!

Fabric Depot did not just deliver on smells, it delivered the fabric, after all. In fact, we both loved the new fabric so much that we planned to use it as our color palette and style guide. The cotton print was made to look old, whitish with faux tea/time stains and a richly hued farm-esque print with apples, vegetables, old scales and brown baskets. (Plus, while shopping, we got a random yarn bomb on our truck out of the deal -- see photo. I know, crazy!)

Once we got home, I promptly sat on the fabric from July 2017 until February, 2018. All those months later, we got it out, and looked it over again. We had both been thinking about it and decided to use spring break to paint (well, I am the painter -- I would paint after hubby had cleaned out all the cobwebs) not only the kitchen but also the butler's pantry and the family room. Why not? It needed it. Badly.

We used Home Depot's Behr paint, the semi-gloss in the "better" variety for our paint. I used a candied apple red for our butler's pantry, a hallway off the kitchen that leads to the formal dining room. We use the little room for coffee making and storing my huge collection of old dishes (well, part of my collection -- I also have a hutch and a sideboard filled with them. I have a problem). This room took 2 days and three coats. Bright red is tough to get totally smooth!

I painted the kitchen buttery yellow, and it was pretty tricky on the ladder, reaching way over the deep cabinets to get to the wall. It took three days and three coats in there (the builder's paint was a dead red-brown flat color -- one of my coats acted as pure primer over that dark color.)

And finally, I painted the family room deep brown. It was also very plain -- the builder called the color "Sawyer's Fence --" we'd call it "The-bottom-of-your-socks-after-a-long-walk-on-an-unswept-for-five-days-kitchen-floor." And once you got up close to the Sawyer's Fence walls, you could also see it was very scuffed, aged and dirty. I confess: clean as we did, I still knowingly painted a bit of dirt right into the walls -- more than once. Or twice. I'm thinking of those spots as time capsules. This room -- and I think I was sick of painting and not feeling as careful and leisurely about the activity at that point, plus spring break was over and this was the following weekend -- took me 10 hours. Granted, no high, deep cabinets in here. Just the fireplace.

Then it got crazy!

We had planned to re-tile the whole kitchen backsplash, which I was really no longer wanting to do. I said to hub, "Hey, can we paint the tile?" He got so excited it frightened me. "Yes!! We can! Why didn't we think of that? We could save so much money and time!!" We immediately set out reading up on how to do paint kitchen tiles, and it turns out it is no big deal.

To begin, I used an old dental instrument to clean out all the old caulking under the existing tile. Then, we vacuumed the questionable crumbs, and whatever else we found, from the now-revealed crevice (Whoa! the house really settled!), and cleaned the stone tiles. They were icky grey and looked really dull against the new, vibrant yellow paint. We only sanded the tops where there was grimey grease that didn't want to wash off. This was one of the only places I used tape in the whole project (painter's tape and I have a dubious past) as I knew it would work for me around the tiles; I put it on the counters and just on the wall for a nice sharp line above the tiles.

I used 2 coats of Gliddon Gripper Primer on the tiles, followed by 2 coats of Behr untinted interior semi-gloss paint. I did not wait the recommended times to put each subsequent coat on; I just did each coat as the paint was dry to the touch. I will wait the 30 days recommended to replace the caulk so the acrylic paint can totally cure.

Then I got another idea: we were thinking of replacing the backsplash over our stove. It's a wall hanging, really, from Broan. But it was stone tile/resin. And 13 years old. Why not paint that, too? So I did. I used the same wall paint in our color palette ( I also had some green I had bought, just in case) and some cheap artists brushes. I painted the whole thing white to start (avoiding the grout in some areas to make it rustic), then added color to the center. Once that was dry, I painted the white over the color again and wiped much of it off with paper towels, dabbing or wiping depending on the texture I wanted. I think I like how it turned out! And it was cheaper than buying a new one, for sure. I finished the backsplash over the stove with 2 coats of glossy acrylic sealer.

I am now 95% of the way done with the next part, actually making the curtains for the kitchen windows. I did not make the roman shades I had planned on. Instead, I found some cute, kitschy ideas for gluing fabric onto roller/pull-down shades. Blog posts I used are here and here. They are drying and hopefully will work well! If they do, I may just do them again for the sliding door.

Through all of this, I finished listening to audiobooks The Golem and the Jinni and Jane Eyre (the last one through the Craftlit podcast, which I adore! I highly recommend it when your hands are busy!). I also knitted some while waiting for various coats of paint to dry.

There are a few more redecorating items still to address, like the fabric covers on the dining chairs, and installing a new, white sink with farm/country style faucets. But this is what I have so far: