Hill to DIY On... Kitchen Part 1

In the classic teen rom-com "She's All That," a popular jock makes a bet to turn a nerd into the next prom queen in just six weeks. Well, meet my kitchen. She is the nerd, and I am the jock. And it only took me a year and a half to turn her into a prom queen.

To be honest, I have been putting off blogging about this. There were a lot of projects and I had to look throughout all of my social media posts throughout the past two years. Some of the pictures are not the best quality because they are screenshots of videos. Honestly, each project could be talked about in a separate blog, but I am going to divide this up in parts. So here is my kitchen, part 1:

1.

The very first thing I did was add open shelving to the dining room just to add more storage. As all my projects go, big or small, this did not go smoothly. The wall anchors I used were meant to be screwed in, rather than hammered in like I was expecting.  Some of the anchors even bent when they were being screwed in, and through my struggle, we ended up with a big hole.

I ended up just putting the shelf right above. I really like the way this turned out. I did eventually change the table out for a cute teal side table I found at a local store in Canyon. I do eventually want to change the brackets out for something more stylish. 

2. The next thing I did was take out the carpet. My house had carpet everywhere, including the bathrooms and kitchen.  This carpet was disgusting. It was older than the rest of the carpet throughout the house and had so much dust and questionable stains. 

We went to Lowes and found tile that was on clearance. It looked like hardwood and I really liked that style. It was darker than I was really wanting and our goal was to lighten up the kitchen, but Aaron pointed out that it is reflective so really it will lighten up the kitchen. If there is a good deal on something I will convince myself I love it. So we took the tile home and stayed up way too late putting it in.

So now we had this dark wood against this dark wood panelling. I wasn't planning on keeping the panelling dark, so I decided it would be okay and I am not living on a pirate ship and am not feeling claustrophobic. This is exactly my vision. I'm fine. I'M FINE.

My hand took a beating, but look at baby Ollie!

I hate grouting. Okay, I hate cleaning up the after effects of grouting.  Here are my instructions for cleaning grout:

You need: A bucket of water,  every single towel in your house, a sponge, and gloves. 

1. Put your gloves in another room. Constantly talk about how you should be wearing said gloves, but never put them on. 
2. After grouting a section soak your sponge in water and use it to clean the grout that is on the tile.
3. Once your water is dirty and you are making as much of a mess as you are cleaning up, then walk the bucket through the living room. 
4. Empty your dirty water into the grass, clean the buckets, and take it back inside. 
5. Repeat this process until you have a nice trail of dirt on your carpet. 
6. Once you have a nice trail, put down every towel you own to create a path. 


 We had a not yet one year-old, so we had to wait until after his bed time to get started, hoping to finish before he woke up the next morning. It needed to be clean enough for him to crawl around and not get into trouble.

We found some tile that wasn't completely stuck to the floor with mortar, but we thought once it was grouted, it would be alright. It was not, so I had to take the tile up and take off some of the mortar and more evenly put it back. It took forever. 

3. Another project was to paint our pantry door with chalkboard paint. I added hooks on the back to hang measuring cups and spoons.

It's been a fun creative outlet to play on between projects. I will say that not all the chalk comes off. I don't know if there is a certain brand of chalk that might work better.

4. While peeling off lining from the bottom of the sink, I discovered that the whole board was rotten. I had to cut out the offending section. We didn't have any electric saws at the time and I am not entirely sure how we managed to get it out. I think I used a Dremel, which destroyed all the attachments. I still haven't replaced those, yet. 

5. 

The next project was to paint the countertops. I got this countertop paint kit from Giani.  It's a really simple project; you roll on the primer and sponge on the different colors. When I first did it, it looked like camouflage, so I cut up the sponge smaller and added layers until it got the effect I liked. The last step is to add three layers of topcoat. 

And y'all. I did not do the third step. It was one of those things I intended to do, and thought I did, but never did. So because of that, I do need to go back and do some touch ups because the yellow is showing through. Then I will finally do the final step.

Hopefully this wasn't too long of a post. It was seriously a long project and I am loving going through pictures and memories because the kitchen has come such a long way.