Susie Q & Gus: Kitchen Tour

Our house has a beautiful, gourmet kitchen, that is never used up to it's full potential! Gus and I are both picky eaters and not very good cooks. It's pretty sad. If we ever won the lottery I would definitely hire a personal chef.

The kitchen was one of two reasons we bought our house. I just couldn't pass up such a nice kitchen especially when most the other houses we looked at had tiny, outdated kitchens. I hated the wallpaper the sellers had in there but I immediately knew what I would do with it.

A couple before pictures: Take not of the hideous wallpaper, window coverings, and light fixture.

Being a University of Georgia fan means nothing goes better with black and white than red! I've always wanted a red room but living in apartments I could never paint. When I saw this kitchen I just knew it had to be red. Not only did it have to be red, but it had to match this beauty:

I promptly took myself to Lowes to pick up every red paint sample I could find! I'm pretty sure I came home with about 60 of them. I laid them all out around my mixer trying to find the best match. This task would have been so much easier of Kitchenaid would just pair up with one of the paint companies to come out with a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer Paint line! How cool would that be?

Anyway, I finally narrowed it down to three or four colors but I just couldn't decide on one. I hate making decisions, I would much rather someone else do it for me! Gus wasn't interested in being the decision maker though. He fully supported my idea for a red kitchen but he wanted me to make the decision. . . my guess is if I ended up hating the color he didn't want to have to take the fall for it! I went back and forth on different colors but finally decided on Valspar's Quite Red

Now that the paint color was selected it was time to get busy!!! I was over the top excited about our first project in our new home. Well, that excitement lasted about 2 minutes. Wallpaper is a pain in the arse to remove. It's not like I didn't know this, I'd just never experienced it. The kitchen had two different wallpapers and the one over the chair rail wasn't so bad. The top layer peeled off easily and then the adhesive layer came off after being hosed down with a water/vinegar mix. The wallpaper below the chair rail was a different story. That stuff did not want to come off. I finally broke out our clothes steamer and it helped a littler. Unlike the top half which came off in nice long pieces, this stuff came off about an inch at a time. I had several moments of total frustration where I almost just gave up. I didn't though and eventually all the wallpaper was gone. Of course we were left with walls that were now in awful shape. I plastered and plastered and plastered and the walls still looked like crap. In the future, I would just skim coat the entire room.

After all the frustration it was time to paint. . . . .not so quick, it was time to prime. Two layers of primer is what the Lowes guy suggested. One sandable layer to help with all the bad spots and then a grey layer to help with the red paint. Now, our kitchen doesn't have a lot of wall space so I thought no problem! Wrong, the space above our cabinets is virtually impossible to reach. Gus had to lean a ladder against the cabinets and reach back in there. . . my arms weren't long enough to even reach! It was such a pain! Hmmm, maybe a grey kitchen wouldn't be so bad?!?!

Ok, maybe a grey kitchen would be bad. It took 3 coats of red to not look streaky. . . .well only 2 coats over the cabinets because you can't see up there anyway!!

The finished product, before we decided to have some electrical work done

(The table is from Target. I recovered the chairs because I didn't like what came on them)

We've always wanted to add some recessed lights, change out the fugly track lights, and the gothic looking fixture over the table. Earlier this year we were having our roof replaced and decided to just go ahead and let our contractor do all the light work for us. I'm so glad we did. I think it's a big improvement!