BHC May Progress Report: Week 1.5

It's official. I'm overwhelmed. A progress report might give me some motivation to keep on going... maybe. So far, I've cleaned out all of the upper cabinets in my kitchen, thrown out all the outdated things, rock-hard marshmallows and such. I opted not to paint the insides or put new liners in, because they still look fine (and there's still that hope in me that one of these days, we'll have new cabinets!) All they really needed was to be cleaned, organized and the paint touched up along the front edges of the shelves. Amazing what a difference it makes. Before:

And after:

Much better.

The rest of the week's energies went into both my boys' birthdays (on the 3rd and 8th) and my youngest's confirmation (on the 6th). I did start in on the lower cabinets, but then discovered my dishwasher has been leaking, clear through to the basement (luckily nothing was ruined down there) and swelled up the chipboard underlayment under the tile. Kind of took the wind out of my sails. I told my husband this would be the perfect time to gut the whole kitchen and start from scratch! LoL If only...

So this week, I had a real desire to run away from home scratch something off my to-do list. I spent Wednesday and Thursday over at my son's house, finishing up his kitchen cabinets.

Spent an awful lot of time and elbow grease on this...

... soaking and scrubbing the latex paint off the cabinet hardware and then spray painting it all...

... which saved him about 150 bucks on new hardware. :o)

All that was left was painting and re-hanging the doors. Here's a progression of the pantry area, from start to finish. Icky, partially painted in spots, raw wood in spots, multi-layered, peeling contact paper... gross. (The upper cabinets to the right had already been painted in this shot.)

Painted inside and shelves lined (finally, a home for the beer mugs!)

And doors painted and hung:

The whole kitchen, before:

And after:

With some new tile (and maybe countertops?) and paint on the walls, it'll look great!

And now, I'm ready for a relaxing weekend... happy Mother's Day! :o)