Hi friends! Well, first of all… Happy Father's Day, Happy first day of summer and Happy Summer Solstice! At least the calendar gives me some frame of reference. I've been in a remodeling time warp! So much has happened that I haven't even had time to blog about. We finally got the walls painted with the help of some professionals who we hired to take off that dreaded wallpaper. Even THEY had a really hard time so I know it wasn't anything we were doing wrong. It was just really stuck on there.
Here are some pics of the tedious process…
As you can see, it was a big, fat mess. I couldn't even watch after a while. I think after the third day, these guys got frustrated and started getting VERY aggressive in getting that paper off, removing huge chunks of drywall in the process. Yikes. They had to mud over almost everything and then sand. Like I said, a MESS. The whole project took three guys almost one week!
Finally, paint goes on the walls… it's a light, sagey kind of green…
And I just had to have one red accent wall… OMG, that ugly brown door will soon be painted, too! I'm not telling you the color because you will think I have seriously lost my mind. I'll just show it to you when it's done and you can tell me what you think!
Speaking of red, I just love red in a cabin. It seems to bring out the beauty of all that wood. This is where I went a little crazy. In a good way? I decided to be BOLD and paint the cabinets red! Not the doors of course, since they are a gorgeous, wormy chestnut, which is native to these mountains and now a rarity. But I painted
behind them… using, of course, Annie Sloan's chalk paint, again Emperor's Silk (same color I used on the front door).
(((((((sigh))))))) It was a real project. It took FOR-EV-ER. Or so it seemed. It was an experiment, after all! I've never painted cabinetry before. I got my inspiration from a pic I saw on Pinterest. This one:
I started with a base of a pale green that sort of matched the wall paint, thinking I would cover that in red and sand some of the red off for a distressed look. This is what happened…
It looked pretty good close up… but overall…
I hated it. It just didn't work for me.
So, I decided to use some dark wax to try to make it more cohesive and wound up with something much too dark. Then I put a red wash over everything and it was just too red and very monotone.
I then sanded off a bunch of the dark wax, actually exposing some of the underlying wood and did another red wash, which gave me some very brilliant red spots! It almost looked like it was glowing. I liked that but, once again, too much red. So I ultimately added yet MORE dark wax, but only used it sparingly and in streaks, to imitate a wood grain and… voila! It worked. I was finally happy with the end result:
Here they are, all done, finally! Mikey putting the cabinet doors back on.
Now we're waiting for the stone countertops and we'll be putting up glass subway tiles for a backsplash. Stay tuned for more renovation fun from our mountain cabin!
Love,
Helyn
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