Take that image and in your mind double it's hideous offensiveness. That is what was lurking besides the ugly, old lady wallpaper in my man friend's kitchen.
So after taking the terrible kitschy curtains down I began ripping and scraping off the wallpaper.
Only to be faced with this---
So, per my mother's suggestion, I washed the walls with TSP, a special cleaning agent, made for cleaning walls before painting. Such compounds as well as primer can be found in our paint department:
I then began priming. It felt so good to cover up the panel of death and make it all white and clean
However, I noticed that in certain places the primer was starting to crackle. I, like all good daughters, had just followed my mother's advice and NOT read the directions on the can of primer. Apparently I wasn't suppose to first wash the walls with TSP-- it reacts with the primer.
I thought about crying. Instead I took myself down to the store where Hardware Terri-- the Diva of the Hardware World told it wasn't the end of the world. Sandpaper was my salvation:
I bought myself some sandpaper and sanding down the cracks in the primer so they wouldn't show up in the paint. It was slightly annoying and my mother felt badly that she had given me some faulty advice, but such is life.
After the sanding I used that nifty blue painter's tape to tape around all the molding, the windows, and the cabinets. It was time consuming, but dare I say-- a little fun.
Then came the paint!
From here:
To here:
VOILA! (The color is called Copper Bangle and for the record, my father-- the illustrious Tom of Tom and Pierre-- thinks I should have painted it white.)
Anybody can undertake such a transformation. All you need is a little patience, some courage, and the UFS Hardware and Paint Department.
