then we looked at the house on grand avenue, and both instantly agreed that the rust orange shag carpet, 50's pine wood paneling, and iron eagles hiding in every nook and cranny were oversee-able. the garage(s) was more than what we could have ever dreamed of, there were numerous bay windows with large sills for the cats, and a well-placed sun room. there was a small yard, a cute deck, and three bedrooms. we were sold. we bought.
my sister and i spent a day pulling up the disgusting carpet, my mom and best friend helped pull down some of the most atrociously hilarious wallpaper i've ever seen the next, and i spent a few days scraping the linoleum off of the sun room hardwood floors. that was the extent of work done on the house until this summer. i was inspired by the kitchen on the show parenthood (if you haven't watched this show, i highly recommend it!) and finally decided what i wanted to do with my cabinets. being under a super-tight budget, i'd paint the cabinets a sage green color now, do the backsplash another time and, maybe way down the line, add a butcher-block counter top. as a last-minute cheap idea, i decided to spray paint the existing hardware.
pine wood = golden hue throughout entire house
early in may, i started on the process, along with the incredibly useful assistance of my mom. she built her own house from the ground up, and is comfortable working with both wood and paint. this was my first real attempt at home improvement, so i was more than grateful for the help.
after sanding, priming, sanding again, painting, sanding ONE MORE time, and painting the final coat, i got lazy. the painted doors remained on sawhorses in the garage for almost an entire month. all i had to do was spray paint the hardware! i finally motivated to do that, and rehung the doors.
not quite so gold anymore!
so, where's the fail, you ask? the fact that by mid-august, all of the paint was still tacky. anywhere that paint touched paint resulted in NO paint. if i leaned on the counter while cooking or doing dishes, my jean would stick to the cabinets juuuuust a little bit when i walked away. not the end of the world, mind you, but pretty dern discouraging.
i managed, in my first home improvement project, to buy faulty paint. fortunately, i had an experienced painter working with me because otherwise, i would have just thought that i did something wrong. not the case! a complaint to the store resulted in a call from the paint maker, lab tests, an inspection, and the verdict: they will pay for a professional to strip and redo all of the work that i did. so for that, i will disclose: the company was valspar. i may have purchased a bad product and spent a lot of time on something that would never be quite finished, but they are doing the right thing. so really? win.
