A Kitchen Update - the Walls are Closing In

You remember what the walls looked like when we started this mess, right?

You can easily see the floral wallpaper border, and matching paper above the counters.  What you may not notice is the dreadful grasscloth wallpaper.  PAINTED grasscloth wallpaper.

So after removing the floral nonsense, we started in on the grass.

It did not go easily into that good night. Oh. My. Gosh.  It took us several days of hacking and ripping and sanding and scraping to get the walls anywhere remotely smooth.  And we already knew that we'd have to have the whole mess of it skimcoated with drywall mud if we wanted to paint it.

Please for the love of God, never ever NEVER put this stuff in your house.  It is NASTY.

Once we got the walls under control, the electricians came in to rewire the kitchen.

They did NOT improve the look.

(Though I almost want to say it looks better than the wallpaper...)

Then the worst part of the project started... the drywall.

Have you ever tried to get drywall dust out of a house?  Not an easy venture.  The danged stuff is insidious, I tell ya!

They did the best the could in terms of protecting the floor.  And their patch-and-skimcoat job was great!

Finally, finally, it is starting to come together.  We painted this weekend, took up all the protective paper, and put down the baseboards and added a new chair rail to the dining area.

(No trim here, tho.)

WooHoo! It's starting to look like a kitchen again!!!!!

(Well, except for the fact that we still need cabinets and appliances.  Details, details, details.)