$20 Kitchen Update

I mentioned that we were doing a few things to our kitchen recently. Did I fail to mention that we were doing these things for, oh, let's say, zero money? Ok, trying to update it for zero money, but willing to use a *little* teesy bit.

I don't have a "before" picture of my kitchen, but this one at least shows the original color of the laminate counter tops. The laminate also went up the walls to form a, ahem, nice backsplash.

When I got home from work one day, this is what my kitchen looked like.

Then there was a few hours days of scrubbing and trying anything to get the old glue off of the wall.

Then came the laminate counter paint. Yup, you heard me. They make paint specifically for covering old laminate. We used the light ash color.

Here is the countertop after one coat. (Check out the nicely patched and primed backsplash too.)

And here it is after two coats.

On a side note, painting the laminate was the cheapest way to update the counter without spending lots of money. We spent about $20 at Home Depot on the paint. We used supplies that we already had and the rest was pure sweat equity.

The laminate paint was VERY STINKY! We tried to paint it at about 3pm one day with windows and doors open and then sleep in the house that night. We started off fine, but at 2am I woke up and HAD to open the window in the bedroom. Yeah, it was the middle of February and freezing cold, but it was better than the burning eyes and throat feeling.

Here is the after pic. The paint had to cure for about 2-3 days, which meant we could not put anything on the counter for that long.

Here is another "staged" picture, but the color looks a little funny because of the flash. Now if you would just ignore my beautiful pink and cream floor...

Overall, we are really happy we did this, but in my opinion, it is not a permanent solution. In some spots, the paint dried with a funny texture, and I am not sure how we could have prevented that. I figure aesthetically, it is great, and if ever we sell the house, we have left it with a "blank slate" so to speak and ready for upgrades.

PS: See that blank, odd shaped spot in the wall to the left? Check out what I made to put there.

I'll be linking to these parties this week.