Not all primers are created equal

I have painted a good amount of furniture and my biggest complaint is that the paint often chips.  I have tried many different primers and approaches to painting but the end result is often the same...the paint chips.

And then I came accross this blog and decided to go ahead and try the bonding primer.  What did I have to lose, right?  I chose Valspar because I buy my pain from Lowe's.

It turns out bonding primer does actually bond pretty well to what you are painting.  So I knew that I would use it to repaint my cabinets.  The last thing I wanted was any chipping after all my hard work.

The process of painting the cabinets went like this:

1. clean cabinets
2. lightly sand the surpface with a 220 grit sand paper
3. wipe clean
4. paint with bonding primer using a small foam roller to avoid brush marks
5. let dry (dries fast)
6. 2nd coat
7. dry
8. and paint my white satin finish paint on the cabinets (2 coats)

Yes, decided to paint our white cabinets white again.  You just can't go wrong with white cabinets.

Check out how Young House Love paints their cabinets.

320 Sycamore also shares her tips for painting cabinets

kitchen budget

We have decided to keep our original cabinet to save some money and because they are solid wood and with the exception of needing some new paint in good condition.  This will save us a ton of money.  However we will be replacing the following:

1. countertops
2. tile backsplash
3. sink
4. cabinet harware

We will be adding the following to give our cabinets a more custom look:

1. crown molding to the top of the cabinets
2. beadboard to the side of the peninsula and a few accent areas
3. a new frame around the fridge

We will be doing all of this with a budget of ...............drumroll please........................

$1,500

Yes, only $1,500. 

You can save a lot of money doing your own work.

We are at it again

We bought this home when I was 6 months pregnant with my daughter.  She is now 2 years old.  In about three years we have managed to make over a dozen updates to our home and continue to work on it weekly.  As rewarding as it may be sometimes it feels like we will never stop working on our home.  Not to mention that having 3 children makes it hard to get much done around here but we do what we can, when we can.  Our last big project was the main bathroom in our home.  You can read about that here.

The truth of the matter is that we actually really enjoy (most of the time) remodeling our home and making it "ours".  A few months back we talked about making some updates to our kitchen but then as usual we got very busy and it was put off.  It wasn't until we had a dishwasher leak that required all new flooring that we realized that NOW is the time to work on the kitchen.

Cue....our next project.  The kitchen.

I'm gonna attempt to blog about the whole process.  I can't make any promises but this is my goal.  I'm often asked how we did something when it comes to remodeling and I find that many people think many simple projects are 'too big' or 'too hard' for them to do themselves so they put it off unti they have the money to pay someone and then it often doesn't get done, right?  Been there.  But have no fear.  If we can do it, so can you.

So let's get started.  Here is our kitchen before we moved in.  The previous owners' style was a little out of date for me but they kept a very tidy and clean kitchen.  Very impressive.

Here are two more views.

And here is our kitchen now.  As you can see we have already started some work (like removing some end caps at the end of the counter).  We also replaced all of the appliances.  I wish my counters were as clean as the previous homeowners. (sigh)

So there you have it.  The beginning of our kitchen remodel.

day 1 of the great bathroom remodel

My excuse for not posting since before Christmas goes something like this:

baby got tubes in ears, son went to hospital on Christmas with pneumonia, busy Christmas activities, and our usual trip to Shriner's hospital in Minneapolis. 

So as you can see we've been busy.  But I am back now and hoping to keep up with blogging but I just can't make any promises.

As you know from my last post we are remodeling a bathroom in our home.  Everything must go so we are replacing basically everything right down to the cast iron tub.  Here are some photos of our bathroom today before we my husband got started.

What you don't like pink?

This is actually a mild version of this bathroom because when we bought the house this bathroom looked like this:

That's a whole lotta pink.

So today was day 1 of our remodel.  The tub is the first item to be replaced and it must be done in a timely manner since our other bathroom is a shower only and my kids require baths. 

My husband removed all the tile and drywall around the tub today and tomorrow he will remove the million pound cast iron tub by breaking it into pieces.  I will watch the kids while he does all this work. 

Hey, it's a fair trade, right?

Here is a picture of the bathroom tub area at the end of day 1.  My husband did a great job and we didn't run into any unexpected problems.  He even cleaned it all up.

And here's daddy's helper.

So cute!