Keep in mind the hair- to-wet-ceiling ratio....

Well aren’t I just a lazy thing? No, not really. I spent a good week there nursing a bad sinus infection which triggered some lovely migraines. Ah, the festive joy. Nothing like having a doctor saying to you that they want to perform a CAT scan “just to be sure”. Ugh. All clear though and I was able to finally get back to the art of reno last weekend and actually managed to get some much needed work done.

It was time to get back to the kitchen...

  

I spent an hour during the week taking all my cabinet doors off and putting them downstairs. The kitchen looks a little weird all cabinet-naked.

I invaded my favourite Home Depot and picked up some paint stripper to wage war on the cabinets with.

Toxic crap…but effective toxic crap. Luckily the former owners, in their usual do-it-half-way approach, did not do any form of prep work before painting the cabinets so the off colour dark reddish brown paint came off very easily. I used a squared headed small screw driver to get the gunk out of the groves and a old tooth brush that has been bathed in Tremclad (it was all dried up causing the brush to become as rough as steel wool) to go along the edges of each cabinet to loosen off the paint. 

But remember – safety first! 

stripping...not quite the outfit you would expect...lol

Wear a mask and gloves. I tried to wear protective glasses as well but when you have a mask over your mouth and nose and your hot breath shoots upward, you have a tenancy to fog your glasses up. So I ditched the eyewear shortly after this picture. Have a work area that is well ventilated cuz this stuff stinks to high heaven…and will make you kind of high as well. As I don’t have a garage I had to settle with doing this deed in my basement with the far little window open. It helped marginally so I took breathing breaks. I have a make-shift work area in my basement. It is actually some old kitchen cabinets and old counter top that belonged to my Dad. Reuse and Recycle! Any person on a reno mission should make themselves up an area to be messy in. Where you can slop all over and leave tools out for days on end and no one gets mad.

The process, despite being easy, took a long time and at the time of this entry I still have ½ dozen cabinet door left to do, 4 drawer fronts and the frame of the kitchen cabinets itself. Ugh again.

So I think I shall slightly revise my aspiration of finishing this little project by Jan 22 and say it will be more like the end of January.

In addition to the cabinet stripping I finally got the ceiling painted. Now I bought one of those special rollers with a shield on it thinking that would be a smart buy and would keep me from being splattered. What a cumbersome waste of money. Unless you ensure that you constantly have the roller at a perfect angle you end up tilting the shield and ramming it against the ceiling causing you to have to redo the bit you just did to cover your ooops. Skip it I say and improvise. For the second coat I used my paint edger and just smeared the paint on the ceiling. 

 

Worked perfectly. However, word to the wise - when standing on a step ladder painting the ceiling it is best to keep in mind that hair-to-wet-ceiling ratio, or you will get one heck of a laugh when you check yourself out in the mirror and find that you have slightly frosted your hair with white ceiling paint. Ooopsey.

It was nice to finally put my light cover back up over the naked bulb and have that annoying chore done.

Looks like I have some kind of flying saucer in my kitchen...

As it was getting close to the Christmas season, I decided that what I had done was enough for now until after the holidays. I think I will try to get the hinges cleaned and start on the spray painting of them from antique gold to muted silver during the week next week, but I fear that may not happen. So lets just resign to the fact that the festive season does bring out the lazy in us and that’s ok!

So Ho-Ho-Ho my fellow bloggers...I wish you all a safe and happy Christmas season!