How to transform your kitchen for less than $100 (or, "Are we done painting yet?")

As Joe already mentioned, we are in painting hell. Our recent efforts have focused on the kitchen. I was hoping I'd have the complete "after" pictures ready to post by now but, alas, mother nature hasn't cooperated with us the last couple of weekends. Ice and snow have limited our ability to travel to the country estate. So I am going to ruin the suspense and go ahead an post a few "almost after" pictures of our kitchen work. (*If you don't care about the kitchen and want to see gratuitous pictures of Max, skip to the end.)

First, the wall paint. Here's the cutting in shot:

I actually really like the green in the kitchen. But it just doesn't go with anything else. The counters and floor are ivory and the trim is true white. The combo just didn't work for us. So we decided to paint the walls to match the countertops and floor (the color is Sherwin Williams Toasted Pine Nut). That way, the walls, counters, trim, and floor have a sort of cream on white thing going on. It makes the cream/white combo seem deliberate instead of clashing.

"But that's so boring," you say. "Why would you want to paint your kitchen Johnson County Beige?" (Sorry JoCo readers, but you know it's true). In a bold (at least by our standards) move, we decided to put color where it counts--on the cabinets.

The decision on whether to paint the cabinets was quite a debate. Some people (my Mom) were adamantly against it. Others (my friends Sarah and Lindsey, who have or have had painted cabinets) told us to go for it. The fact is, those cabinets are dated. We hated the wood finish. We despised the carving in the doors. So we figured we couldn't make it much worse.

So now, I'm going to present to you the Gagnon method of painting cabinets. We guarantee that, by using our method, you too can get your kitchen cabinets painted in about a month (or two...hell, it may take you three months--we don't know since we're not done yet).

First, you learn to use a drill and take off all the cabinet doors, stripping a couple of screws in the process.

Next, you wash all the doors and stack them in a neat little pile on the kitchen floor. You foolishly believe you will be able to completely prime and paint them the following week.
When you get ready to start priming, your husband will tell you that the cabinets must be sanded before he will let you begin priming. You make him do that.


Then, you prime all the cabinets, drawers, and doors. During this process, you will lay on the floor, climb on the counters, and stand in the kitchen sink. When you are finished, you will have primer in your hair, on your bottom, all over your hands and shirt. Your husband will sigh and ask you how you can possibly get so much primer all over yourself in just one day.

Finally, after the primer dries, you notice that your hand and wrist are cramping from using a paintbrush to prime for 6 hours. Your husband will give you a rest and begin putting a coat of paint on the cabinets (Sherwin Williams Bunglehouse Blue).
You will be pretty encouraged by the results, but still nervous about how this is all going to look when you get done. You will realize that it may take you another month to put the cabinet doors back on since you did not mark them when you took them off.

OK, now it's gratuitous picture time...
*Here's a picture of Max when we took him to see Santa a couple of weeks ago. I'm pretty sure this was the worst moment of his life.
*And here is a much happier picture of Max wearing his own Santa hat.

Painting Pictures

Kendra and I have been painting. And painting. And painting. For a long time now. But we have made progress; only two rooms remain to be painted. We've done the before/after thing with the playroom, office, and the living room, but I don't think we've shown off the parlor or dining room yet.

Here is a before picture of the parlor:

Note the white walls, and the dated ceiling fan. We like the wainscoting, and will keep it, but we couldn't live with the white walls. The parlor adjoins the living room through a set of pocket doors and--most of the time--each room is visible from the other. We had used a light green color to paint the living room, so we wanted something fairly neutral for the parlor. We settled on "Natural Tan" from Sherwin Williams:
The Natural Tan adds just a touch of color without clashing with the green in the living room, which is the effect that we were going for. As you can see, we also swapped out the ceiling fan to match the one in the living room.

We've covered the dining room before (in all its mirrored glory), so I won't re-post a "before" picture. The walls were a very rich red. We liked the red, but with the stain on the trim it just made it too dark in there. We lightened up the room with Inviting Ivory from Sherwin Williams (who names these colors?!). In addition to the nice contrast with the wood, it makes the room seem bigger. Here is an after picture of the dining room (the notorious mirrors are on the wall just left of the camera; the living room is to the right):

A gratuitous picture of Max, due to the
demands of "anonymous" commentators
(we know who you are, Willis).

I must say that painting is the least sexy of the home improvement jobs so far, and I certainly will not be sad when the last coat is rolled on the walls.

An Unexpected Christmas Gift

I posted last week about the winter storm that hit Missouri. This past weekend, we were hit with another round of ice and snow. Undeterred, we managed to make the trek up to Lathrop and work on the kitchen. That, however, is the subject of another day; this post concerns the generosity of new friends.

Earlier in the week, I received an email from our new insurance agent, Aaron Greer. Aaron is about my age, and is one of the few people Kendra and I know in Lathrop (along with our neighbors to the north, Rachel and Emma, who introduced themselves a couple weeks ago--but now I'm getting sidetracked). Apart from getting us a good price on our auto and home policy, Aaron is someone I've grown to rely on for letting me know the ins and outs of the Lathrop community.

Anyway, Aaron sent me an email to let me know that the ice storm hadn't caused too much damage to the trees at the country estate. He did mention that one tree did have some broken limbs. I replied that I hoped it was the ugly, drooping tree by the porch; Kendra and I had planned to have that cut down anyway. I went about my merry way the rest of the week, and didn't think much of the conversation--other than to realize how fortunate it is to have someone keeping on eye on our place.

Then, when Kendra and I arrived at the house on Saturday, we saw a pickup truck in the yard, and a man with a chainsaw doing violent things to the hated tree blocking the front porch.


That's Aaron on the right, dressed appropriately for the weather and the work at hand; and that's me on the left, dressed like a damn city boy.

After a couple hours work in the freezing temperatures, Aaron got the tree down and graciously hauled off the remains. Kendra and I were thrilled to have one of our "problems" eliminated by the generosity of someone who has known us for less than three months. The kindness of those in small towns was one of the reasons prompting our move in the first place, and it was nice to have that decision validated, at least in a small way.

Here is a "before" shot; notice the tree on the left side of the frame:
The tree doesn't look terribly intrusive in the photo, but it looked 100x worse in real life. It was ugly, it blocked the view from the porch, and it did not frame the house well from the street. Here is the house after the removal of the offending tree:

Much better, at least in our opinions.

So Aaron, if you are reading this, thanks again. We owe you big time.

997, 998, 999...1,000!

Last night at 8:59 pm, Gonna Eat a Lot of Peaches recorded its 1,000th visitor. While that is not a big deal for most websites, I am utterly shocked that this many people take time to read the (somewhat) regular updates on our little project. From traffic statistics, I would guess that there are about 15-20 regular readers of the blog, and we are grateful that y'all are reading. It certainly makes it easier to spew forth posts when you know that there is a dedicated--albeit small--audience for their consumption.

I know the suspense is killing everybody--the 1,000th visitor was from Little Rock, Arkansas, having been referred to our blog from Houseblogs.net. Come forward to claim your prize!

Weather-Shortened Weekend

Mother nature did her best to make sure we didn't get any work done on the house, sending an ice storm across the state of Missouri this weekend. Not wanting to face a shut-out, we braved the elements and made the drive north to the country estate. Even if we couldn't put in two solid days of work, by God, we were going to get SOMETHING done.

Forecasts called for things to get nasty Saturday afternoon, so we figured we had a few good hours in the morning to knock out some projects. We made it to the house at 10:00 am, and made surprising progress in 2 1/2 hours. I managed to get the ceiling fans wired and spinning with the help of my new voltage tester from Home Depot. Satisfied that the house wasn't going to burn down, we turned our attention to the kitchen. Earlier in the week, Kendra had supervised the delivery of our new fridge and cooktop (as previewed in an earlier post), and I must say that the fridge sits astride our kitchen like a Colossus:

The thing seems huge, but I think that's just because we had gotten used to not having a fridge in there.

By the end of our workday, we were able to get the kitchen about 95% cut in, too. With some good weather, and some hard work, we should be able to get the remainder of the walls painted, and the cabinets primed and painted this weekend. That would make the kitchen pretty much "done," and just leave two bedrooms upstairs to be painted.

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun...with Double Mortgage Payments!

The moment of truth is here; our first mortgage payment on the country estate is due. I'm still holding on to the check, because I can't bring myself to pay it yet. We are a little disappointed, because we haven't sold our urban highrise yet, but, on the other hand, we are also very excited about the house. So we'll keep plugging away, working on the weekends, and hoping a buyer materializes for the urban highrise.

This should be a good week/weekend for us. Tomorrow our new refrigerator and cooktop will be delivered. We haven't planned out the weekend, but it would be cool to get work done in the kitchen to go along with the new appliances. As always, we'll keep you posted about what's going on, and this time we'll try to remember to bring our camera so we can post pictures.

An Almost Perfect Weekend

Once again, I forgot the camera. Well, I actually forgot the battery. The bottom line is that there are no pictures to post right now, but there is some good news to report. Remember that big list I posted last week? We knocked most of it out this weekend. Paint the dining room? Check. Finish the window trim in the guest bedroom? Check. Touch-up the playroom, guest bedroom, living room, and parlor? Check. Fix the ductwork? Check!

We didn't get the ceiling fan installed, but it's close. When Joe took the old one down, all four wires were green. He marked them so he would know which was which, but somehow the markings rubbed off while he was working. Now we don't know which wire is which. So the fan is all but connected and Joe bought some gadget to test the wires to see which one is "hot" (I am so down with the home repair lingo).

We didn't start pulling off trim in the entry yet either. After much discussion with the guy at Sherwin Williams, I purchased two types of stripper. One is a paste meant for the stuff we'll strip on the wall (the windows). The other is a stronger liquid that we'll use for the stuff we'll take down (trim and doors). I am reasonably confident that these will lift off a fair amount of the stain and that we'll be able to use another stain--probably something reddish--to balance the green that is left and turn it brown. This is a job that will probably need to be done outside--or at least with all the windows and doors open for ventilation. It was cold and rainy over the weekend, so we decided not to start that project.

Finally, I took all the cabinet doors off the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen and Joe and I washed them. Those bad boys are getting primed and painted in the upcoming weekend. We also have plans to paint the kitchen walls AND the new appliances are arriving this week. So expect some "after" pictures of the kitchen soon.

We decided to take a vacation from the house on Sunday, so the three of us read the paper in our pajamas all morning, went out for lunch, and did some shopping. I think that recharged us a bit.

So all in all it was a VERY productive weekend at the country estate and a good weekend for the Gagnon family. The only downer? The Tigers loss to OU on Saturday. And the BCS bowl snub on Sunday night. But we wouldn't be Mizzou fans if we didn't have something to be disappointed about, right?

Hell Hath No Fury...

In the last post, Joe described our low morale and Max's meltdown last weekend. He was kind to me, but should probably be ashamed of himself for blaming the meltdown on the baby. I'm the one who had the meltdown.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of painting trim (and I was among you just a few short weeks ago), let me tell you--it sucks. It's the kind of thing you should leave to the experts and exactly the kind of thing that I would like to have hired done but with two mortgages, my accountant (Joe) tells me there's no budget for an professional trim-painter. So I've learned to do it myself, I guess. Last weekend was my third straight painting trim, and I'm going to whine about it a little bit. At the end of each trim-painting day, my wrist (and sometimes shoulder) hurts and my back is sore from practically laying on the floor to paint baseboards. The first room (the playroom f/k/a/ Jayhawk room) was a challenge because I was painting white over BRIGHT red. The second room (the guest bedroom) was a challenge because the walls are highly textured and it was impossible to get a good line. I'm happy to report to you that, save for the windows in the guest bedroom, I think we have painted all the trim we're going to for while. And God bless Sherwin Williams paint because I think I'd still be painting the playroom trim if that paint didn't cover so well.

So I'm in an okay place with it now. But I wasn't last Friday. I was tired of painting trim and tired of it looking like crap. In the morning, Joe's brother Chris showed up while Joe finished up cutting in the living room. They decided they were going to tackle two "quick" projects--fixing the ductwork in the basement and installing the ceiling fan--before resuming painting. Even though Joe has been to the hardware store THREE TIMES for this project, he still didn't have the right stuff. So he and Chris went to the hardware store. In the meantime, Max refused to nap and I managed to get a tiny bit of trim painting done. About two hours later, Joe and Chris show up empty-handed. So they decide to put up the ceiling fan. Two hours after that, it is starting to get dark and there is still no fan. And I've been painting trim all day while giving Max two bottles, two snacks, one lunch, and attempting to put him down for at least three naps.

How many Mizzou fans does it take to install a ceiling fan?

They finally get the fan installed, but there are no lightbulbs to make sure it actually works. Max is screaming. I've had enough. So I pick up my child and threaten my poor husband and brother-in-law with their lives--I am taking the baby for a ride to put him to sleep and the ceiling fan better be working and the living room better be painted when I return. After a 30-minute ride to Plattsburg and back, Max was finally asleep and I returned to the house. All I can say is Joe and Chris must have done some speed-painting (hell hath no fury...), because the living room was painted when I returned. It looked great and the baby was asleep. I felt a little stupid about the fit I threw, but no one said anything so I didn't either. Everything worked out and my blood pressure finally went down.

Living Room "Before"

Living Room "After"

I think you'll agree , the new lighter green (Sherwin Williams, Lemongrass) makes the space seem much more open and brings out the woodwork nicely. And the ceiling fan is actually from this decade, which is a nice touch.

As you know, we didn't do any work on Saturday (go Tigers!) and we only had a few hours on Sunday, so we made them count. My Mom and Dad had Max for the morning, so I finished up the trim work (hooray!) and Joe cut in and rolled the first coat of paint on the dining room.
We still haven't figured out how to get those mirrors down, so they're staying put for now.

So here are our ambitious plans for this weekend:

1. Put another coat of paint on the dining room
2. Finish painting the window trim in the guest bedroom
3. Touch up the playroom, guest bedroom, living room, dining room
4. Fix the ducts
5. Install a second ceiling fan
6. Begin pulling trim off the wall in the entry OR try to strip and sand with the trim still on the walls
7. Maybe--if we're lucky--begin painting the kitchen

It's a pretty big list, I know. Especially for two novice do-it-yourselfers like us. Are we setting ourselves up for another disappointing weekend? Or will we rally and come up with the most productive weekend ever? Tune in next week and find out.

Morale Bottoms Out, and a Weekend Pick-Me-Up

With the holiday weekend, we planned to spend two full days (Friday and Sunday) working on the house. With all that time, we figured to knock out most of the remaining painting, get a ceiling fan installed, and fix the broken duct in the basement.

Good plan, terrible execution. Painting has proved to be extremely tedious. On Friday, we managed to get the living room painted (pictures to come in a later post), and that was about it. Kendra also finished some touch-up trim painting. But we definitely hit a low point on Friday. I went with my brother to pick up the duct work to finish that job, and the local hardware store doesn't carry the pieces we needed. That burned a good 1 1/2 hours. On top of everything, Max decided that he didn't really care for the lack of attention he was receiving, and had a near-meltdown. By the end of the day on Friday, we were ready to burn the house down.

But then Saturday came, and we remembered that we had tickets to the Missouri football game of our lifetime.

Your 2007 Heisman Trophy Winner, Chase Daniel.

The game was a blast, with Mizzou winning 36-28 to grab the #1 ranking in the country.

Our spirits buoyed by the big win, we were able to bounce back a little bit on Sunday. We've knocked out a lot of painting, installed a ceiling fan, and have a good plan to devote some solid hours this Friday/Saturday. We'll post some pics later this week to show the before/after on the painting.

Watching Paint Dry

As Joe already mentioned, the last two weekends have been a little slow. Two weekends ago we traveled out of town for Mizzou football game, and last weekend we had an extra helper.

Max and Maggie

Our 3-month-old neice, Maggie, was with us for the day on Saturday. And we had her baptism to attend on Sunday. So the house went on the back burner for a bit, which is OK since it doesn't look like we're going to sell the city highrise and actually move to our country estate any time soon.

But I think Joe is too hard on us. We have gotten quite a bit of tedious painting (cutting in and trim work) done over the past couple of weekends. And one important task was complete when we left the house on Sunday. In fact, I would say this is THE most important task in light of the MU-KU showdown coming up on Saturday. The Jayhawk room is painted! Every trace of red and blue is gone! And from here on out we will refer that room as the playroom f/k/a the Jayhawk room. Unfortunately, the light was too low to get a good picture of the final paint job, but I took a picture of the room before I put on the last coat of trim paint. I think you'll get the idea, despite the bit of stubborn red that is still bleeding through in this pic.

Go Mizzou!

I also think Joe is too modest. He has failed to mention that, although it is slow work, he is the ultimate cut-in expert.
Exhibit A:
This is a picture of the top of the trim in the parlor, which Joe painted last weekend. Notice the perfect line and the complete lack of paint on the trim? That's the kind of craftsmanship you get when Joe's cutting in. Here, you can see him cutting in the living room WITHOUT EVEN USING ANY TAPE! CRAZY!
The moral of the story of the last two weeks is this:
Even though it can be slow and sometimes the work isn't very entertaining or sexy, we're learning every day and creating a beautiful house--our home--together with the help of our families and friends. So, dear readers, stick with us and watch the paint dry. We promise the pace will pick up soon.