The Reno–Part I

Last year, we completely renovated our kitchen. Full on gutted it and tacked on the dining room too. Being the hoard../I mean saver he is, my husband rescued some of the cabinets from complete demo to be used in the laundry room (which didn’t make the cut that first round of renovations because money). Over the next year, those cabinets sat in our basement and bedroom (we still have the old stove in there, but that’s for another project), seemingly forgotten. Then, one fateful Tuesday evening mid February, Husband proclaimed, “We should do the laundry room this weekend!” It should be noted that my husbands version of this upgrade consisted of hanging the cabinets and rewiring behind the washer and dryer. 


Mine was full makeover—painting cabinets, wallpaper and better lighting. Queue instant panic. As the list in my head of what I wanted to do grew, the reality of three days before “start” set in. Our laundry doubles as our main pantry and as such, there was a lot to remove. Once that was done I looked, really looked, at the walls and realized in addition to countless marks and scratches, there were two different finishes of white—one flat and one semi-gloss. Ew. Fresh paint allover in my favorite shade took care of that and allowed cabinets to indeed get hung that weekend. 


About said cabinets. My cousin-in-law, Javier, owns a professional painting company so I naturally reached out to him for cabinet painting advice. In a nutshell he let me know I needed to sand first with a 225 grit, prime with KILZ Restoration Interior Primer, sand again, then paint with Advance in semigloss from Benjamin Moore in Beau Green. Me wanting to figure out if there was a way around the priming bit (because who needs extra steps?) naively asked if I really had to prime and was told, “You must use primer or your paint will fail.” I interpreted that as, “Don’t have sex; because, you will get pregnant and die…” thanks, Coach Carr.   


Since I didn’t want to rise failure or death, I listened. And was really glad too because the cabinets were pretty awesome—thank you, Javier. Despite all the steps involved, they were done pretty quickly also thanks to our amazing friends (Cara and Jason), who helped hang then spray the first and second coats of paint. It should be noted the cabinets were hung over the weekend. Before they were sanded. I don’t recommend this; but, it’s how it worked out so I just rolled with it. 


After the cabinets were up and painted, I realized quickly I really wanted to add some wallpaper for something a little bit unexpected. After perusing what was available locally, I resorted to Amazon because everything in store was the same chevron patterned shade of neutral or some variation. Great for some, not for me. Found a fantastic wave patten peel-and-stick and ordered immediately. While waiting for that to arrive (so, a day), I purchased the flooring I wanted to put in— a “floating” vinyl. 


Flooring wasn’t part of the initial plan. At all. Our previous house had white vinyl floor in the kitchen. And I despised it with a significant part of my being. With that disdain came the solemn vow that I would NEVER have white vinyl floors again. Enter the next move and THE SAME white vinyl floor in the kitchen and laundry room. As the last vinyl holdout, and since I had already removed all of the baseboards and quarter round (without breaking any) I thought, how hard can a floating vinyl floor really be to install? 


With that famous last thought, it’s time to sign off for now; but, I promise the rest of the story and finished product pictures soon. Stay tuned. Until then…


Happy Shopping!  



Using Format