A fresh coat of paint and a little bit of caulk

This is was my kitchen. Wasn’t it lovely? I suppose the dark stained cabinets and wallpaper might have looked ok when they were first done, but by the time we bought the house last year it was pretty bad. I was absolutely thrilled last month when I found a great deal on 3 gallons of paint in almost the exact color I wanted, and after I painted the rest of the living areas there was almost a gallon leftover, more than enough to do the kitchen.

It was so nice to pull the old paper off. Part of the reason that it looked so bad was because it was just applied over paneling or raw wood with no sanding or primer – after a point the defects and blemishes showed through, and bugs ate away at the paper over any gaps.

I was originally just going to fill and sand the soffit, and then paint it. However I am not very good at that type of thing, so it didn’t look as finished as I wanted after it was painted. (Most of my before pictures were very haphazard afterthoughts as I was in the middle of doing things – I totally forgot to even take a picture of the painted soffits.)

It was $15 for a nice roll of bead board wallpaper at Lowes, so I applied that over the patched, sanded, and primed soffit. Much easier than trying to put up actual bead board. Wallpaper is not one of my favorite things, especially after having peeled so much of it off the walls here, but I needed something that would hide the raw wood edges, gaps, and knots.

I also painted the trim (or is it crown moulding, since its by the ceiling?) white, which made the room seem much larger. I still have some touch up painting to do, since I dripped a little painting the trim, but it looks 300% better. I love the cool gray paint, and the soffit really brightens the kitchen. But you notice that little gap between the ceiling and the trim? You couldn’t even tell that it was there before, but it sticks out now.

I read somewhere to caulk things like that for a finished look, and since I found a tube of caulk in the garage I decided to give it a try. I could not believe the huge difference it makes – even without doing the touch up painting the room looks more finished.

This really isn’t the after photo: I plan on adding matching trim between the cabinets and soffit after I refinish them, and plan on touching up all the paint at once after I’ve caulked all the trim. I also haven’t painted the wallpaper at all yet, or done the third (and possibly fourth) coat of white paint on the trim. But I wanted to post something, since its been over a month since my last post. Even halfway done there is a huge difference, it is amazing that it only took $10 of paint, $2 of caulk, and $15 of wallpaper.

The kitchen shares a wall with the living room, which shares a wall with the hall, which means I ended up painting almost all of the main living area since there wasn’t really a natural stopping point. I have the gray and white paint in large yogurt containers, that I will pull out and paint for an hour here or there, since the white paint especially requires 3-4 coats over the dark unsealed wood. I will post a nice before / after picture once I finally do get to the after.