There is a reason that the hubby and I refer to ourselves as DDIY'ers. DON'T Do It Yourself'ers!
Neither one of us is mechanically inclined, or enjoys huge home repair and remodel projects. Sure, I love to sand and stain and restore simple pieces of furniture but that's about as far as I go. Lately though I've noticed how everyone (or OK, maybe it just seems like everyone) in the blogosphere is repainting their kitchens or bedrooms, or hell, their entire homes! And everyone has made is seem like it's easy peasy, nothin' to it! So how hard could it be?
We knew when we bought the house that the kitchen needed updating badly! We have started this "update" bit by bit when purchasing the new stainless steel fridge, and then decided, after I pointed out to the hubby how easy it seemed, to repaint the kitchen ourselves, including the cabinets. Plus, we're on a tight budget and why spend thousands to have someone else do what you can probably do yourself? And even though last fall the very nice gentleman at Lowes told us we could even do the wood flooring ourselves with pieces that just snapped into place, when he mentioned to the hubby that we'd need some sort of inexpensive electric saw, I saw the hubby turn a horrid shade of gray and that's when we knew that whilst we could handle the painting part of it, the flooring [and eventual new granite countertops too] was going to be handled by PROFESSIONALS!
Our kitchen is fairly large and pretty ugly (this shot was taken after the Puppy Chow Incident!), everything about it shouts 1989!!, the year our home was built. Everything has a yellow tinge to it, the floor being the worst. I cringe just looking at this photo.
Anyhow, we'd decided on a green colour for the walls, a green flecked darker granite for the countertops and to paint all the cabinets white. We're going with a light bamboo flooring as well.
So, having gone back and forth on exactly what shade of green for the kitchen, we finally decided on a shade called Celery Bunch. Let me just say right now, on the record, that I pretty much hate pastels and any colour in the Pepto Bismal chalky pastel spectrum. Blech! At the time, Celery Bunch seemed like a good choice. It wasn't too light and it wasn't too dark.
Yesterday Megawatt and I got started in the kitchen. I was on some sort of DIY-high...running around the kitchen taking the hardware off the cabinets, unscrewing screws, and covering everything with blue painter's tape! I totally got my handyman groove on! I was running around like a madwoman with a screwdriver. I got so carried away, just me and my little screwdriver, that Megawatt had to stop me before I suffered delusions of grandeur and started fiddling with the plumbing.
I was pumped! I was excited! Let's break open the paint cans! Let's stir it up and slap it on the walls! Then I opened the paint cans.
Hmmm, this Celery Bunch is a lot lighter than I originally thought it was. Megawatt even thought it was pretty light. But, being the intrepid women we are, we decided to start painting anyhow, in hopes that it might magically darken a bit once it was on the walls.
We painted and talked and laughed and in between giggles we commented on how light it was. Then I got the brilliant idea to toss some white paint up on the cabinets just to see if it might make the green "pop" a little bit more.
Here was the section of the kitchen we were working on before we got the initial coat of paint up there...
Megawatt painting...
And now, all I can see when I look at it is Pepto Bismal's newest flavour, "Pathetic Green Mint Chalk."
Even trying to contrast it against the section of cabinet I'd painted white, it's still too friggin light. I hate it! And yes, I know we have to take the cabinets off and primer them and all that good stuff. I just wanted something to gauge the horrible green with. I DON'T LIKE IT!
So, guess what the hubby is doing today? He's heading to Lowes and going to get another couple gallons of paint. And this time, we're leaving the Celery Bunch where it belongs, in my tuna salad! We're going for a deeper shade of green called Garden Room. If you're so inclined, you can head out to Behr's website colour picker thingy and look it up, as it wouldn't let me cut and paste. It's Behr number 450D-4 and it's going to be on my walls before I go to bed tonight.
This is going to be a long weekend.
