Things we've found.

To say that the previous owners of our house made some questionable decor choices would be a major understatement.  However, I'm pretty sure many of those choices were made 30, 40, or more years ago... so I'm inclined to let some of it pass.  For instance, this ceiling fan:

And these cutesy, old-lady bathroom fixtures:

And let's not even talk about the shag carpeting and the pink walls again, ok?

While working on the pipes under the house, Josh pulled out a ton of stuff that had been left behind in the crawlspace-- tires, old bamboo mats, construction materials, and multiple fruit baskets filled with random, old crap.  Here are a few of the more interesting things we've found in and around (and under) the house, left for us by the previous homeowners:

I keep hoping to find a Picasso hiding behind some of the wall plaster, but alas.  I just don't think I'm destined for Antiques Roadshow fame and fortune.

Mission: Kitchen cabinets. Objective: Blue.

I think for about two weeks straight while working on this project, I would show up to work every morning with blue paint on my hands.  And in my belly button.  And in my hair.

Seriously.  Painting kitchen cabinets is no joke.  Though it is not technically difficult, the necessary time investment is ridiculous.  I am SO glad I decided to get this done before we moved in to the new house (I finished the painting part well before we moved in, but was not able to actually re-hang everything in the kitchen until this past weekend).

Technically, there was nothing wrong with our kitchen cabinets.  They're in good shape, and they're not very old at all... they were just... meh.

So, I decided to paint the cabinets.  After looking through millions of photos online of various kitchen color schemes, and once we had decided on definitely using Mexican tiles in the kitchen, the decision was made to paint our cabinets blue.  I tried a couple of different shades of blue, and ended up choosing the one that most closely matches the blue that shows up in most Talavera-style tiles and decor.  That way, no matter what tile colors we end up using for the floor accents of the wall backsplash, it'll all be somewhat coordinated.

Keep in mind that we are doing most of the work on our new house in the evenings after we get off of work, so things are taking longer to get done than they would otherwise.  This whole process took a little more than a week and a half from start to finish, during which time I worked on nothing but this task.  The first night, I took off all of the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, removed all the horrible hardware, and gave all of the cabinets a light sanding.  This seemed to take forever.

It took me a good portion of one night to prime the cabinets in the kitchen, and another night (with assistance from my coworker Lisa) to prime all of the doors.  We have 30+ doors and drawer fronts in our kitchen.  That is fantastic for storage, not so fantastic for painting.  I used KILLZ primer, and it seemed to work pretty well, although I wish it had been a little bit thicker because then maybe my single coat of primer would have looked a bit nicer (yes, maybe I should have just done two coats of primer.. but seriously, this was taking way too long; I'm impatient).  [Josh told me that I "did a crap job" priming everything.  I'm keeping that one in my back pocket for later, folks.]

I went to work on painting the cabinets before I bothered with the doors.  This turned out to be a good plan, because the cabinets themselves required three coats of paint whereas the doors only needed two (the cabinets themselves are a glorified laminate material, but the doors are actually real wood- this made a big difference).  I left the inside of the cabinets alone because I figured it might look a little too dark if everything was the same blue color.  I think it was the right choice.

I used Valspar Signature Paint+Primer, and have no complaints.  I had a little bit of an issue with roller marks staying on the side of the cabinets, but I think that was more a result of using a less-than-awesome roller than the paint itself.  And I love the color!  It's call Deep Sea Diving.

It took me a few days to paint the cabinets and the doors, but with each new coat of paint they just looked better and better.  Once everything was totally dry and done, I gave two good coats of polyurethane to the doors and the ends of the cabinets to keep them protected.  Considering the messes that result when my betrothed cooks, these cabinets are going to be subject to quite a bit of scrubbing in the future, and I'll be damned if I want to go through this whole painting process again any time soon!  The polyurethane took a few days to completely seal, and I did two coats just to be sure.

I finally got to hang everything back in the kitchen this past weekend, and I couldn't be more pleased with how it all turned out.  The color of the cabinets looks fantastic with our newly tiled floors (more on this in a different post).  After moving everything inside from the workshop I noticed a few dinged or rough spots that I'll have to patch up with a little bit more paint, but you can't even see the imperfections unless you are right up next to them so I'm not going to stress about it for now.  I purchased some new cabinet hardware to match our faucet and light switch covers, and that just about sums it up!  Not bad, eh?

Before...

During...

After!

Summary:  Painting cabinets is kind of a bitch.  It's not hard to do, it just takes forever.  But for me, it was completely, totally worth it.  Almost makes me want to go paint the cabinets in our bathroom too...

Paint ALL the walls!

When we said we were re-doing the entire inside of our new house, we meant it.  When we're done with this baby, not a single wall nor ceiling nor door will be the same color as it was when we purchased the house.  I've got a pretty good jump on painting most of the house already, but there's still quite a bit to do.

Some of our friends came over one night in the first days of our housework and helped to prime all of the non-white walls.  That made a huge difference and really made it easier for me to paint most everything else by myself.  Luckily, I've been spending a bit of extra cash for the good, thick paint and we haven't had to use more than one coat on most anything.  The darker colors (like the red we're using in the living room) needed two coats, but otherwise it's been pretty smooth sailing.  Then one of my old field school students came to visit ABQ for a few days with three of his friends, and we let them crash at our old house in exchange for some help painting.  So in the span of only about 3 hours, we got two rooms painted!  That was pretty awesome.

I spent more than a week painting the kitchen cabinets, and THAT was a doozy.  But I'll save that for a different post in itself.  Also, all of the walls in our house are textured.  Textured walls look nice, but damn are they a pain to paint.  Especially the ceilings.  Have you ever tried to paint a textured ceiling in a 350+sqft room, by yourself, in poor lighting?  It's a terrible idea!  My arms were aching, my neck was sore, and I still had to go back the next day and paint over a bunch of spots where the texture prevented the roller from covering everything.  But it looks good now, and that's what matters.  My kitchen and bathroom are no longer pink.  That's all that matters.

I plan to post before and after photos of all of the rooms once they get finished, so you will be able to see all of the colors then.  You'll just have to trust me that they look damn good.  We're pretty good at picking out awesome colors, if I do say so myself.

Also, I made the amazing discovery that the little 49-cent paint tools from the hardware store can double as bottle openers!  GENIUS.