What did I get myself into?

Long story super short: we had to do some repair work in our basement because of a cracked cast iron pipe. The result of that work landed me priming some new paneling on Monday. Since I finished priming the paneling in record time and didn’t want to waste any of my primer, I decided I should just go ahead and start priming my kitchen cabinets! I’ve had the paint for months and just haven’t found the right time to start painting. Of course, I figured the right time should be the week that school starts back and I start teaching again. Perfect timing.


I did get a whole lot done though! On Monday, I removed all the upper cabinet doors and primed all the cabinet boxes. The rest of the work will take some time. The cabinet doors are in pretty bad shape. Whoever painted those doors five years ago did not know what they were doing! (That might have been me.) I’m going to have to do some major sanding and cleaning before I can prime and paint. In the meantime, this is what we’ll be looking at:




I’m using Kilz Clean Start primer, and it is fabulous! Definitely the best that I’ve worked with so far. These are the cabinets we use as our “pantry” since we don’t have a walk-in pantry. The majority of the cabinets are on the other side of the kitchen. I’m only painting the upper cabinets to lighten the kitchen a bit. I still love my black cabinets and don’t want to lose them completely! Plus, those lower cabinets get SUPER dirty from a certain two year old and two dogs, so the thought of white cabinets down there actually scares me a bit.





I had my external hard drive out because I was making our yearly photo book and ran across this picture from five years ago. These are the same cabinets. The uppers were new and not painted (doors not yet installed) and the lowers were a lovely peach and cream. The paneling was a super high gloss, and we had vented doors EVERYWHERE (even the bathroom!)! Thank goodness I could see past all this when we bought our house! Prior to the hardwoods, there was a lovely linoleum that the pattern actually looked like there were footprints in it.
It. was. so. bad.




Looking back through all the pictures from when we first bought our house over five years ago has made me so proud of how much we have done! I’ll show you more “before” pics when I’m done painting the cabinets so you’ll really appreciate the transformation. The former owners, in addition to all the lovely treatments above, had plastic chili peppers hanging from the kitchen windows!


Happy Wednesday!