When we bought our house, the worst thing about it was the scalloped wooden trim in the kitchen. I meant to take it down, but by the time I realized that would mean repainting, I was so tired of painting that I just decided to ignore it for awhile.

Yes its a bad picture. I don’t have a very good before – guess I wasn’t proud of it..

 

A cookout, before the redo.

 

About two years later, I finally got the scalloped trim ousted. The yellow paint however, had grown on me. Our Jarrod (incidentally, he’s in the picture above) did the repaint for us – he couldn’t believe that I wanted yellow again. I had him do a lighter yellow on most of the walls, and a darker yellow in the “caves” where the walls indent.

I did the cabinet refinishing with a lot of assistance from Tiffany.

The most useful thing you can do with Rolling Stone.

Tired after days of working…

 

Attempting to fix the wacky work inside the mini-pantry.. someone used a hot glue gun on it!

 

The doors drying in the garage. (Cellphone shot)

 

On about the 4th day working with the paint stripper, I just bought the damn masks.

 

Products used on the cabinets:

Handi-Strip Semi Paste Stripper – This was kind of crappy. It coagulated on the wood really fast, basically lifting the polyurethane, but then quickly redrying, therefore sticking it back to the wood.

Klean-Strip Semi Paste Stripper – This stuff was awesome. Found it at Wal-Mart, the Lowes didn’t have it.

Rust-Oleum Stain in Kona – did one coat of this, applied with a sponge.

Rust-Oleum Polyurethane satin finish – did two coats of this with a brush. Except on the window seat, where I did three coats.

Olympic High Gloss Enamel – I don’t remember the color name, but it’s orange, and was used on the edges of the shelves.

Oh the glorious absence of scalloped trim!

 

Light fixtures by Thom of course.

 

We still want to replace the stove, and the counter tops, and window treatments and a few decorative elements that I’m planning on adding are still missing. But the colors are much better, and at least I don’t have to look at scallopy trim any more.

Another cookout, after the changes.