The kitchen update that won't die...

Hubby and I have been trying to update our kitchen for 7 of the 9 years we've lived here, but you'd never know by the amount of progress we've made. One day I went on an wild, ripping-out, crazy fit and tore down half the ceiling tile, half the soffits, and half the fake dark-wood paneling. Half of all these because I'm a wuss and the other parts were too hard. Eventually, Hubby helped with the rest of the demo.

Since my crazy fit, we've replaced the ceiling tile with what looks like painted wood boards. Most of the walls are now covered with bead-board, which was the easy fix after discovering that the walls in the original kitchen (the previous owners added on a sun room) were covered in glued-on plastic tile. Let me give you a tip: if ever you find this crap during a remodel, just rip down the old plaster or drywall and put up new, because while popping the tiles off is easy, the glue does not cooperate. Hubby chiseled the stuff off in our bathroom and it left them in horrible condition, so I had to do a texture paint treatment as a fix. And the smell! It stunk so bad you didn't want to breathe in there. Needless to say when, we realized the kitchen was covered in the stuff, we decided to cover them back up. What sucks is that part of the tile had been covered by bead-board that we ripped down (This was not the same as the fake wood paneling. This kitchen was a decorator's nightmare).

Anyway, I'm now in the process of painting the cabinets, then we'll replace the counters, paint the walls, and last of all replace the flooring, which is currently the ugliest linoleum ever made.

The cabinets are going great. If you ever decide to paint cabinets, you MUST use Cabinet Coat. This stuff ROCKS! It's the best paint for this job, as it gives you a smooth, durable finish that truly does look like it came from the factory that way, assuming you do it right.

This picture is to show the before and after:
Notice how dark the before look is? And hubby even stripped them a few years ago. They were hideously dark. He stripped them because several people had a cow when I said I was going to paint them. "That's gorgeous wood!" they said. Maybe so, but the cabinet style is outdated and it's freaking dark in there, even with four huge windows and the back door window. And I don't even have window treatments on three of the windows! So paint I did, criticizers be darned!

This photo is just to show how smooth it is, although you probably can't really tell anything.

Now I just have to do the lower cabinets, which hopefully I'll get to quicker than the upper ones.

By the way, if any of my sentences are hard to interpret, I apologize. I'm on day 4 of a tension headache/migraine and am currently all doped up. Loopy is great for making it through a workday, but terrible for writing.