Better Home Challenge: May Non-Reveal

Well, it was bound to happen eventually... no "reveal" post for this month. May is always a super busy time at our house, so I'm really not surprised. And there were a lot of extra goings-on this year besides. So I'm still working on the kitchen, slowly but surely. At this point, I plan to keep at it into June and hopefully squeeze in my June project, too. Or not. We'll see. Life happens.

I do have a few progress pics to share at least.

Cleaning out and organizing the cabinets seemed to take forever. I was seriously NOT in the mood AT ALL. I was overcome with such overwhelming lethargy over the whole thing, I was doing well to finish one a day. Hated, hated, hated cleaning out the cabinets. Like pulling teeth.

Seriously.

At any rate, I finally finished that miserable job and got around to painting -- which pretty much destroyed the kitchen. For a week or so, it looked more or less like this...

But it was so worth the mess. The color is off in these closeups, but you can definitely see the improvement. We went with basically the same color as before. Just went over them with paint deglosser, sanded the really bad spots, and they covered great. (If I'd had to do multiple coats, I'd still be painting. No thanks!) Before:

And after (still waiting on the hardware):

Midway through the painting, I gave my daughter the go-ahead to start stripping wallpaper -- it is not coming down without a fight. She got about this far before deciding it wasn't as much fun as she thought it would be, and then she quit:

I stripped a ways further and decided she was right. It's still not done. At this point, this is how things look:

Still to do in the kitchen:

* Put the cabinet hardware back on
* Finish stripping wallpaper and prep walls for painting
* Replace light fixture or cover on light fixture (broken years ago by some kind of Nerf-propelled missile)
* Paint ceiling
* Paint walls
* New floor tile (Yes! We're shopping tile!)
* Replace broken storm window

I'll be back on Friday with June's project and keep updating on the kitchen progress as it comes along. Excited to get it done!

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A little update on my son's kitchen project: Remember the cabinets I was painting at his house in my last post? All white, white, white...

This past weekend we were there again, painting his ceiling (more white) and adding a "little color" to the walls...

The color? Red Solo Cup. Literally. He took a red Solo cup to Home Depot and had them match the color. And now -- if you listen to country music at all -- you'll have that song stuck in your head for the next hour or so.

You're welcome. LoL