Kitchen Repaint

We repainted the kitchen in January and I can' believe how much it's changed my perception of the house, and how come it took so long to get around to it. We went from nasty burnt umber walls and bone colored trim and cabinets to nice bright silver-blue walls with bright white trim, doors and a new coat of kitchen and bath paint on the ceiling. Everything is done in a semi-gloss and it looks awesome. We also changed the hardware on all of the cabinet doors and took the opportunity to reorganize all of the shelves.

I started the job grudgingly -- I'd wanted to paint Child Two's room and the entry-front hall first, but Mrs. Agricola and then Mater & Pater Agricolae got on me and I knew the jig was up. We originally intended to paint only the walls and ceiling, but the cabinets and trim looked so beat that we gave the whole room a total makeover and it looks great. Pater Agricolae helped tremendously in hanging the cabinet doors, which proved the trickiest part of the job, and Mrs. A got her reorganization fix in a huge way. The kitchen is not perfect, but it's a huge improvement and with the addition of a table from and bar stools from Ikea it's completely more useful. This was another good, family, project on the Quarter Acre that has improved life and fed our handy-people nature.

By Hand

One of our favorite things about the suburban transition is that the domicile is in need of work. Now, we're not talking about major renovations, but rather about cosmetic changes -- painting, cleaning, yard work. We just finished painting the dining room. This necessitated patching walls, the ceiling, sanding, cleaning, priming then the application of two coats of paint to all surfaces in the room (yes, we painted the ceiling and all the woodwork, if you don't do that, don't paint the room).

There is a lot of woodwork in our dining room -- chair rails, base boards, crown moldings and three door frames, a window frame and a neo-Classical styled corner hutch -- and it grew tedious near the end but looking at the finished product is gratifying. The job took several nights of work, after the day job and after the children were put to bed. A professional could have done it faster -- though not necessarily better -- and we would have been free to remain forever ensconced before the video altar. But, we took matters into our own hands, and got dirty, got paint splotched, and started to work on the callouses, toughening up relatively pink office hands.

One of the realities of living in a service based economy is that we can pay others to do nearly everything for us. Others can paint our dining rooms, mow our lawns, cook our meals and even train our children to pee in the pot. We like to do manual labor around the Quarter Acre. It reminds us of where we come from. It permits us to connect with our surroundings; use our hands on something more than a computer keyboard; take greater ownership of our property.