September has been a whirlwind- Project 1- The Kitchen!

 So to say that I seem to make my own life a bit complicated with my numerous projects is an understatement in most cases, but add in a significant birthday and you get a crazy level of craftiness/DIY from me. I am turning 30 in a few short days and I also have been working from home for over a year with a little girl in the house. I have gotten a bit stir-crazy and was dying for some updates in my house (I'm hoping this isn't a mid-life crisis because I was hoping to live longer than 60 years...but ah well).
After discussing my need for "new" with my husband (and assuring him I intended to only upgrade the house and not the husband) I set about removing the popcorn ceiling from my kitchen/dining room and hallway. This was one of the projects that you just know is going to be messy, so you avoid it. (Here are the before pictures), but I finagled an ingenious (if I do say so myself) tool to assist me. It required a wide putty knife (to do the scraping), a wire coat hanger (bend it out so it looks like a ball on a stick), and then a plastic grocery bag (fashion the bag and the hanger into what looks like a butterfly net). As you spray the ceiling with a lite mist of water (to keep the dust down) you run the putty knife along and catch all the bits in the bag hanging underneath. Remarkably, after I had completed the entire scraping project I only had one dustpan of bits to collect off the floor! Then, on to the refinishing of the ceiling. Luckily, ceilings look good with slight texture so this only required priming to seal the ceiling and then painting with ceiling white.

 So here, I got my husband involved in the  process (as he is significantly taller than I am, so I edged and he painted. Once that was all done, my kitchen looked significantly better, but not as great as I wanted it to. First, I thought the door looked out of place, so it gained a coat of (primmer and three actually) paint too. Better, but still not awesome.  So here, I got my husband involved in the  process (as he is significantly taller than I am, so I edged and he painted. Once that was all done, my kitchen was bright white and black checks and looks better, but now it needed some color. Enter, repainting the walls.

 We selected a bright red called Cranberry Zing (doesn't the color sound delicious too) that happened to match a funky set of picture frames hanging on my cabinetry. ( you can see those frames to the left of the door picture). Now, my kitchen has pizzazz!