Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 7

I'm seeing the wisdom in having all the money you need for a makeover beforehand.

Our AC broke a little while ago. While we could cover the repairs and make it through just fine, it does mean my kitchen makeover is experiencing a little involuntary hiccuping (fun fact about me: I oink when I hiccup. I cannot make it stop, and it's loud. People think I'm faking. I'm not. Xander tells me to knock it off every time I oink. David thinks it's hilarious. I try to avoid public places when I get a case of the hiccups. I guess this is one more nail in the coffin of my dream of being thought of as Aubrey Hepburn's little sister. Damn).

So, this week I had to do something completely free. A little bit ago, Natalie gave me a roll of wallpaper she picked up at DI (a local thrift store) for something like two dollars. When she found it, she knew it had to come over to my house to live.

I'd been planning on doing a fun print of wrapping paper or some such thing for drawer liners. My liners were old, yucky contact paper that wasn't really cut to size very well. Not what I want to see when I open the drawers.

I don't think that picture reflects how bad there were. They weren't gross, just old and starting to crack a bit, and generally scuffed up with some stain splatters from my recent refinish. In other words, you probably wouldn't gag when you opened them, but it was worth taking some time to polish them up.

So, I peeled up what I could. I wasn't going to bother getting it all up, because the wallpaper was pretty thick. I did make sure that anything going up the sides of the drawers was removed and the peeled parts were mostly flush with the bottom of the drawer.

Then, I cut my wallpaper to size, and gave it a quick bath in the sink. This brought back a lot of childhood memories of "helping" my mom to hang wallpaper in our home. Lots and lots of wallpaper. She was super good at it. I'm actually secretly pleased to see wallpaper back in fashion, because it can be so beautiful in the right places with the right print.

My kitchen is currently a disaster area. I bought some new cooking gear for camping, and it exploded in my kitchen. Plus, I'm chronically unable to be neat perpetually while working on a project. Stuff just goes everywhere.

So, once I wet it, I put the even (read: side not cut with scissors) side against the side of the drawer. Then I used a washcloth to help it to the edges and corners.

Then I creased it and folded it over. Not too easy with the corners, but I managed. Then I peeled it up a little bit, enough to trim my crease with a pair of scissors. A little more smoothing later, and my drawer was lined.

When I was working on this drawer, there were a lot of people in my kitchen making themselves lunch. I love how David is close enough to come home most days. He's cutting the kids' sandwiches into dinosaur shapes there in the background.

I'm going to put a clear coat of Mod Podge on it to make it more durable. It's so cheerful when I open the drawers.

I love how they look all together.

After looking at that photo in Photoshop for a while, I just had to turn it upside down so the drawers look more like a cake.