Make sure you read: My Ugly Kitchen – Part 1 and My Ugly Kitchen – Part 2 before reading further.

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Part 1 – The Problem
Part 2 – The Solution

Part 3 – The Ending

Losing your kitchen for a week is tough. When you have 4 kids it’s even tougher. We ended up eating out a bunch and our Pastor and his wife had us over for dinner one night. We survived, but the house was a wreck. Around day 3, the mess got to both of us and we had to take long deep breaths…

A few days before the beginning day for the tile work, I primed the walls and trim. The pervious owner used oil based paint which I hate. So I lightly sanded the walls and put on a coat of Kilz. You can get them to tint your Kilz roughly the same tint as your final coat. This helps if you are putting a dark color over a lighter one. Since our walls were white, I had them tint the Kilzs brownish like the final color was going to be.

The walls in the kitchen are pine paneling. It has lots and lots of grooves and was a pain in the butt to paint. I had to paint the grooves with a brush and then do the rest with a roller.

I came back the next day and put the final coat on the trim. I did not want to worry about painting trim next to my new tiles.

The tile work went quickly.

Monday they put down thin set on the existing linoleum and then WonderBoard down on top of that. They screwed down the WonderBoard with screws every 8″. Once that sucker set up, it was pretty darn solid.

They did all the main tiles that day as well.

Oh, also before they installed the tile, they installed our new dishwasher. It is soooo purdy! And it works!

Tuesday they came back and did all the cut pieces.

Wednesday they grouted the floor.

Thursday they did the thresholds and final clean up.

Thursday night was my night to put the final coat on the walls!!!!

As you can see in the under construction pictures, the wall color we were going with was a brown. It looks dark on the walls because that is the primer, but the actual color is lighter.

We went with Valspar paint and the color was to be Moose Mousse.

When I started putting the paint on the walls, it seemed a good bit lighter than I remembered picking out. No worries, this stuff tends to dry darker.

I spent 3 hours painting the pain in the butt walls.

The next morning I ran like a kid on Christmas up to the kitchen to see how it turned out. The painting was tip top, almost professional…

but…

It didn’t dry as dark as I’d hoped. We kept looking at it wondering what went wrong. We held up the paint sample for Moose Mousse and it did not match. Then I had a thought. You know how they have three colors on one sample? Well, I unfolded the sample and held the next shade down up to the wall.

It was a perfect match.

The idiots at Lowes had given me the wrong paint. I grabbed the remaining paint and sure enough, there it was on the printed out label: Hop Scotch.

Needless to say, we were not pleased, but it looks ok. It lacks some of the warmth we were hoping for with a darker color. But it looks ok.

Besides, I am not going to repaint the sucker any time in the near future. Having painted it twice in the past week, I’m just not up to it.

Anyway, here are the pictures, including a picture of our new fridge!

The pictures show the wall lighter than it actually is. My guess is in a few months, I will grow tired of it and paint it the correct color.

I am saving painting the cabinets for another day, when I have more money. I plan on changing out all the hardware and repainting them the same color as the trim. It will look great when I am finished, but it will have to wait.

So, how much did this little remodel cost me?

$2,609.10

Here is the cost breakdown.

What put us over the top was the new fridge. It was not part of the plan, but after we bought the dishwasher and after I thought about the old fridge leaking on the new floor, we bit the bullet and bought a new fridge. My original budget was $1,500. You can see that without the fridge, I would’ve almost hit my target.

I do like it though.

Come on over for dinner if you are in the neighborhood.