This Screwed-Up House - Back to Introduction.
The kitchen was another room that was high on my priority list. Asides from not being fond of the idea of preparing meals along side of all those dusty molds, the peeling wallpaper was driving me crazy.
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The old wallpaper in here was actually done by two people. Mr. Bullfeathers did the overhead part, which came as no surprise to me
considering how obviously thrown together it was. In the actual eating area, the wallpaper was done with great care - I came to find out that someone else finished the job for him. So the paper would remain in that area, but Bullfeather's attempt had to go. At first, I thought it would be easy. I just reached up and yanked a piece of it down to take in to match paint colors. I thought "Oh good, maybe he just used craft paste to put this up!" Wrong. Apparently he used super glue for most of this, because it took out chunks of drywall during the removal process... and some I couldn't get off at all no mater what solvent I used. |
| The skylight is another problem. I have no idea what became
of the frosted glass that goes in here, so we now have a telescopic view of
a tree outside. The air vent is also missing a grate, which keeps things very interesting when the air conditioning is running. Originally this kitchen had a modern-looking Egyptian theme, which was perfect since it's located right next to the room that had the mountain of molds in it. But along with the renovations, I decided to change the theme to something a little more Asian. The challenge here was that the one request for this room was that we kept the wallpaper in the eating area. (The part that was actually done right.) Everything else was fair game. |
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So after ripping out the poorly done wallpaper, we had to
remove everything from the walls we were planning on painting. Easy, right?
On the left, you can see Garith trying to pry off a utensil rack that was home to maybe a dozen aluminum cooking tools. That's right, I said pry. You know those butterfly anchors that you use when hanging something from the ceiling so it won't pull the screw out and fall on you? Well, that's what Mr. Bullfeathers decided was required to support the weight of aluminum spatulas and spoons. And he had to have four of them. Then, just to make damned certain those oh-so-heavy items wouldn't bring down the racks, Mr. Bullfeathers decided to glue the plugs into the screw holes, thus making it impossible to remove them without the aid of a crowbar and taking out large chunks of drywall in the process. |
If you look closely in the photo above, you'll also see a piece of wood that was nailed to the underside of one of the cabinets. This was perhaps the scariest moment during the prep-work, because the board did not appear to serve any real purpose. We were told Mr. Bullfeathers put it there, but offered no explanation as to why. Was it a brace? Or was it just another started-then-abandoned project of his? We really have no idea. So with great apprehension, we took it down. The cabinets seem to be doing just fine without it.
| After patching the damaged walls as best we could, the first
step was to paint everything in a blue that matched the wallpaper.
More photos coming soon as we continue working on this room. |
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This Screwed-Up House - Back to Introduction.
