Tackle It Tuesday: The Reveal

Like I said before, it all started with a handrail.

Since I started teaching piano lessons in our basement, we needed to install a handrail going down the stairs. I bought a plain cheap handrail and decided to paint it to stop it from splitting or giving splinters to anyone.

I had some paint left and wondered what it would look like to paint our cupboards in the kitchen.



These were our old cupboards. They actually don't look too bad in the picture. But what you don't notice is:

A. The cabinet that is slightly ajar NEVER closed, nor did the one next to it without being SLAMMED shut

B: They wouldn't come clean no matter how many times I washed them...they just always stayed sticky and grimy





Another thing you couldn't see was the nastiness in each of the corners where the wood was splitting and had major gouges take out











So I started thinking I could just paint them, without any primer.

First of OH SO MANY mistakes.
After about four coats, the cabinets were finally covered, but so were the hinges. I figured I could just take the hinges off and replace them with new ones.



Oh, if only it could have been that easy!!






I took them off, along with three coats of tacky paint that peeled as well.

After throwing away the hinges, Steve got involved when he came home to me screwing 12 sets of new hinges into the old holes.

Then, going to hang the doors, we discovered that OH NO ( I think there may have actually been an expletive there), the new hinges DON'T FIT!

So, now Steve takes out all of the new ones that had been screwed in, digs through the garbage to find EACH INDIVIDUAL bag that they had come in, tapes them all back into their bags, and returns to the hardware store to beg for store credit to to purchase the new ones.

Hubby came home with a new hinge, which once again, didn't fit. So back to the store again to learn that they don't even MAKE the hinge we need for our cupboards any more.

Meanwhile, our kitchen cabinets remained exposed for a good two weeks while we were trying to figure out what to do.

Then, my husband was THRILLED when the boys and I left the mess to him and headed out of town for the better part of a week.

But my hero came through. I came home to all NEW HOLES drilled and the cabinet doors all hung.





I went right to work the night I got home, filling all of the old holes from the old hinges and getting new handles screwed in.

Then came yet MORE repainting to cover all the new filling, after sanding them all down, which took yet another full day.







After a few more adjustments due to a couple of faulty knobs, the cabinets are FINALLY DONE.














I guess sit really doesn't seem like too big of a deal. But let me share with you our kitchen two years ago to now and you should see it more clearly.

Several years ago our walls were a nasty dirty white with this strange paper board going across the middle of the kitchen, we had these cheap blue white cottage valances on the wall and the old cabinets that had thirty years of grime on them that just wouldn't come off.








Now, green walls, window coverings that match the new color scheme, and newly painted cabinets.
Unfortunately, there is no money to replace the nasty linoleum floor that doesn't come clean, but at least when I am cleaning the walls or cabinets now, the grime I am cleaning no longer belongs to people who lived here three decades ago, it is MY OWN DIRT.

Nothing like counting the blessings where ever I can find them.