Kitchen and Countertop Painting

 Just in case you were wondering what I've been up to in January, I thought I would write a post about our current home renovation project.  Since my husband is retired we have more time than money, if you know what I mean, so most of our home projects involve sweat equity.  We've been wanting to redo our kitchen since we moved in - I mean those orange countertops are just so dated! And the yellow paint - every single house we have lived in has had a yellow kitchen, and I was ready for a change.

We have a friend who knows how to do lots of projects, and he suggested that we try a faux granite paint job on our countertops.  He and his wife did the same thing on their orange counters and it looks amazing, so we decided to go for it!  We paid him and his granddaughter to come over and do the painting since we have quite a bit of counter to cover.  Since we were doing that, it seemed like the best idea to finally do the walls as well.  I did those myself, what a pain!  Kitchens are so hard to paint, and I would say it's been 50 years since these rooms were painted.  I scrubbed down the walls and got busy with that so our helpers could come do the counters.

When the counters are started it looks like the cat was walking all over the counter!  As the layers of color are added it starts looking better and better, though!  I used four shades of brown, wanting to keep the paint pretty neutral.

While we were at it, we made a few changes, taking out a small counter by the refrigerator that blocked the freezer door from opening fully, and taking out a built in desk and hanging shelf in the corner.  We will be putting in a pantry unit in the corner instead for a cleaner look.  

Here are the finished counters!  What a great change!

Now I'm in the process of finishing up the dining room.  Here is the before.  I had to patch some cracks and the corner was in need of new tap as well.

And after!  I am still working on the trim, which is a rich chocolate brown.  We'll mount the tv on the wall, and get rid of the stand in the corner as well.  We are doing lots of sorting and editing - over our 29 years of living here we've accumulated lots of stuff that we don't really need so my plan is to get rid of about half.  We are pleased with having less clutter to deal with!  The paperwork is really needing to be dealt with, so I've got a couple of banker's boxes to work on, but at least it's not in my line of vision every day.  

I haven't had as much sewing time as usual, but I did get my February Island Batik challenge done!  I have extra fabric, so am giving away two kits for the quilt I made, check out my blog post to enter!