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(I know it’s not a word, but it always makes me think of an SNL skit and cracks me up.)
Back with another Dueling DIY update! Progress may still be slow-going for me, but at least this little challenge with Carrie is keeping me motivated. (In case you missed it, here are updates 1 and 2.)
When my uncle came to visit for the kitchen makeover in October, we ran into a little bit of a snag on the first couple of days, making it necessary for us to find things to do until we could actually get to the bigger projects (like installing the countertop). I meant to share this little update a while back, but it’s just how things go around here: I got distracted and started sharing something else that I was working on.
That, plus “before and after” posts need before photos to be accurate, and that sometimes involves me tracking down photos that I took but never uploaded. Plus getting distracted again before I actually finished the final step (painting everything). So, here we go: my kitchen window.
It’s not much and has been covered with ugly wallpaper for some time now. But after removing the wallpaper below the cabinets on a whim, it dawned on me that when it comes to installing anything in its place (for instance, a tiled backsplash), I’d have to make the decision of where that new decor would stop. This decision can sometimes be a little tricky in tight spaces – like the two strips beside the window.
For normal folks, it probably wouldn’t get this much thought. But it spun around in my head far too often. For one, I think it would be really nice to carry tile all the way up the wall and above the window… but regardless of whether I went will large tiles or mosaic ones, that would inevitably mean the time-consuming job of cutting lots of tiles to fit the entire length. I’d hate everything about a project like that.
Plus, I wanted to add molding around all of the windows in the house (sort of an ongoing to-do, end date undetermined), which would narrow the tile-able space even more on either side (which is also unevenly spaced next to the cabinets). And after all of that effort, would it really be worth the hassle? But, if I went with standard casing (the same stuff that’s currently around my doors, and as of recently, around the dining room window too), there would be two odd-looking strips on either side of the window to deal with. Enough to maybe bug me about not tiling it for the rest of the time I lived in this house.
So, I improvised a little. I picked wider molding to fit around the window and give me more of a natural stopping point beneath the existing window sill. Plus, it makes the little kitchen window special. It’s the only molding in the entire house that will be this wide (except for maybe adding crown).
Another item that needed to be addressed with the window: a scraggly old spot that came apart when I took the old wallpaper off (that also wrapped itself inside the window frame, which was annoying as all get out to remove). I tried finding a decent photo of the damage, but it seems as though the best I could find is a snippet from my house tour video taken in the fall:
After a light patching and primer, and filling in seams with caulk, and then painting the entire window as a whole, my little kitchen window is looking a good bit more like it’s meant to be in a newly dressed up kitchen.
And here it is! I hate using flash, but sometimes (like when you’re staring at a window), it needs to happen.
In a related update this week, I finally got sick and tired of stepping over the dangerous power tools, sandpaper blocks, and buckets of paint in my kitchen that littered the floor (after moving the table to the middle of the room, I didn’t have a proper way to store pile them). So I ran out and bought another tall cabinet and did some quick assembly so I could regain a little sanity (and keep Charlie from getting injured, of course). The best part is that I have an identical cabinet out in the garage already, so when the kitchen is no longer a dusty DIY zone, I can move it to its real home and have twice the storage in there. Win-win.
Do you have any small projects that kept bugging you with options? What did you decide to to?
Link up this week’s kitchen progress if you’ve got it!
P.S. If you’re on the set of the Walking Dead in the Atlanta area today, stay safe! Stay home! It took my mom more than eight hours to get home thanks to all of the crazies on the road. And same goes for everyone else in a different city where people actually know how to handle snow on the roads. Hope you’re staying cozy and warm.
UPDATE: Holy crap, interrupting this progress to remind you to go over to Carrie’s blog. She may not be working on her kitchen for a little while after all, but then again, this stuff is just stuff. So glad she’s okay!
The window looks really nice. I am still confused though….you still have a sliver of wall going up each side of the window. Just paint then right? Eight hours!!! I would have gone bat bleep!! Even here in “midwestern” MO when we get a few inches it is messy and the traffic is horrible. Just not the equipment/or enough trucks to care for the roads. I didn’t see the final tally. Do you southerners just have an inch or so? (That’s what I had last heard.) Growing up in Northern MI it was daily life. School every day. Only time we didn’t have it was when it was really windy and kept blowing back into the roads.Ya know– 4-6 foot drifts that kept blowing back. :) I was tough. Now I am a wimp.
Yeah, there’s a tiny sliver, but not enough to make me think I’d need to tile it. So, paint it is!
Thanks for the heads up about Carrie.