August 2016, KOSAREO

Work on the kitchen is priority number one for move in. The dishwasher is non-functional (the seller disclosed that), the stovetop is electric and we’re going gas, and the fridge was slightly newer, but still pretty heinous (the ice it dispensed was rusty and had black sludge in it). So all the appliances had to go.

The before:

First things first, wallpaper had to come down. Luckily it was put it well and came down easily, for wallpaper. Just some steam and elbow grease got the wallpaper down. The ceilings weren’t so easy. The wallpaper contained all of the nicotine, saving the walls behind, the ceiling needed to be scrubbed with TSP. A couple buckets of brown water later we were able to put some oil-based primer up.

What a difference the primer makes in addition to the glue and wallpaper being gone!

Sidenote: this kitchen is begging for an island, but that will have to wait for when we’re rolling in cash (read: never happening).

Now we move on to step two, painting. Painting everything:

Now we’ve finally busted out the Wagner Flexio 870 that we bought, it’s really made short work of the uppers.

It took over 3.5 hours for two people to prime the uppers with rollers. It took us 30 minutes to knock out the uppers with the sprayer. Sure, covering everything was a chore, but my shoulders are devastated and I wasn’t dripping with sweat in the end.

Purchasing a home took forever; 19 months in total. And we certainly didn’t end up purchasing the kind of home we thought we would. We originally thought we would purchase relatively done home and have one or two projects where we could put our finishing touches on. What we ended up purchasing was much farther to the fixer-upper side of the scale.

So much wallpaper, so much cigarette smoke staining. There were spots on the wall where we could see the outline of two previous hanging pictures. And don’t forget the most disgusting “feature” of the house: carpeted kitchen! It’s horrendous but on the upside it makes a great tarp for painting/cleaning purposes.

I can’t help but admire the dedication the previous owner had to preserving the original design of the house. From the harvest gold stovetop and dishwasher to this absolutely revolting light fixture. It’s almost in so-bad-it’s-good territory. But falls just short.

I’m beginning to think that the ceilings were painted yellow, not white. But it’s more likely the previous owner never painted anything. Anything! That’s purchasing a house in 2003, living in it until 2016 and not changing a single thing.

I argue the makeshift bookshelves need to go, Daniella likes them.

This front door set is common to houses built in the 70’s. We might need to paint these bad boys sooner rather than later.

This is basically how every bedroom looks. They all have the same ceiling fan and window.

More pictures to come once we start tearing into the house.

Progress: Kitchen Reno

The Before