Death to the Kitchen - Kitchen Nightmares

Sure, it looks peaceful for the moment. But this room was just as time consuming as the living room to complete for very different reasons. It was caught between two worlds: a newly refinished hallway and a stunning living room. It was trapped, I tell you. We stored furniture in there and such until we could actually spend some concentrated time working on it.


Do you see the ceiling fan above the table? We couldn't turn the fan on because it wasn't securely bolted into the ceiling. It would weeble weeble wobble and we were afraid it was going to fall down. That had to go. And we were getting tired of seeing the four-tone walls, even though there was only a little bit of wallpaper left to remove - oh wait, that's five. Whatever.



The demure lighting above the sink was dated, but that didn't really bother us too greatly. No, I think it was the melting points on the ceiling tiles above that tipped us off that there may be a fire-hazard there. Do you like our stained-glass atrocity over the sink? A bit of an abhorrence, don't you think? Oops! Now we've gone and done it...


I was so glad when it was gone that I punched a hole through the wall. Actually, I considered using a panel from the bathroom to repair the hole in the kitchen, so you could see through the window into the bathroom for a few "brief" moments. Then I thought better of it and put back the damaged panel. I still have to repair someone else's repair job in the bathroom, but I can deal with the bathroom later. I bought a panel in Moose Jaw at a discount because it was so ugly nobody was buying it and I knew we'd be painting over it. I'm grateful I did this stupid thing and removed the panel because the pipe you can see leading up through the ceiling was the very drain I re-routed our kitchen sink into after it backed up. The picture helped me remember.


Then there was the issue with the mold in the ceiling. Yeah, I washed and spray-painted all of the roof and T-bar, removing the fuzz and gunk from years of water damage and cooking disasters (paint doesn't stick to grease, by the way). In this picture you can also see that below the cabinets is one style of panelling and above is another. Two different textures, two different depths, too different to leave them alone before painting. I had to fill in all of the pock marks and level the two panel types by feathering mud in there because I didn't desire to tear out all of the cabinets if I wasn't going to replace them, tear down the L-channels for my T-bar ceiling and have the whole ceiling come down, or find another disaster waiting behind door number three that I would have to deal with. No, I opted to make it look nice and leave the rest to God. It looks acceptable. In a year I will think of fixing it again (and leave it alone) because I'm a perfectionist, but in my tired state I think it is more than adequate.


That's the bathroom wall panel I removed. It looks fine from here. In construction we would say, "I can't see it from my house," but this statement is lazy and inaccurate at best, because it is in my house. Yes, this will be painted too, along with the teal trim in our storage roo - I mean, bathroom.



The grease-covered burgundy-coloured range hood had to go. I think it used to be that 60's appliance green. Was it Grandpa and Grandma Janzen who used to have appliances that colour? (Grandpa and Grandma, thanks for the birthday card. Aslynn and I really appreciated it.)

I believe the cupboard doors took four coats of paint to remove the forest green and transform them into white. Why white? Isn't that a little boring for us? We live in a dark trailer. You find the logic. Besides, the colour makes them pop, and everything looks good in there now. And one of the doors was white already anyway. (You can see it in the first picture on this post).


I shall now "publicate" this...

Mark