It all started when I wanted to drink a cup of tea! Now what does drinking a cup of tea and lining shelves with contact paper have to do with each other, you ask! Well the cabinet was overstuffed and when I reached out for the tea box, it and other miscellaneous stuff fell out of the cabinet. I thought to myself, while the water for my tea simmers I can quickly empty out the cabinet and reorganize it, it's just a small cabinet it wont take more than 5 minutes, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong!
I emptied it out and the contact paper that was put there by one of the previous owners was hanging in the front and I decided it was time to pull it off! Well, once I pulled it off I remembered why it was still there in the first place. When we first moved in, I went to remove the contact paper from one of the other cabinets and there was another paper underneath it that was torn around the edges and I tried to remove it but that thing was super glued. I decided it was a job for another day (or year) and I put everything in the cabinets and called it a day. That was a year ago, and now the day has come, a year later, but nevertheless the day is finally here!!!!
The water for my tea was simmering so I poured it in a cup with my tea and let it sit while I got to work. I went and grabbed my hair dryer and a spatula to remove the older contact paper. I just applied some heat and used the spatula to scrape away the paper and it wasn't too bad. I did another shelf, and another and pretty soon I was taking things out of all the other cabinets and removing more paper.
By the time I realized my kitchen was a disaster zone, my tea was cold, my kids were hungry and my husband was coming home from work soon and he too would be hungry. I thought I could give them a quick clean up and put everything back away, but the shelves were so sticky now. I tried cleaning them with rubbing alcohol and it wasn't working. Now what? I hadn't though this far, but it was too late, I was in too deep, there was no going back now. I had to make a decision quickly, so I decided I was going to have to buy more dreaded contact paper.
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| I like how the bare wood looks but it was too damn sticky |
I searched online and I found contact paper has come a long way, there are so many beautiful options. The only problem is I needed something quickly accessible, I didn't have the luxury of waiting for beautiful contact paper to be shipped from God knows where and arrive a week later! I needed something now! So I checked online for my nearest stores and finally settled on this one from Target. The next day I purchased the contact paper, went home, gathered some supplies to use with the contact paper and got to work on that.
- Pretty contact paper
- Golden scissors
- Pink measuring tape
- Hubby's ugly box cutter
- Goodwill card to smooth out the paper (not shown)
*Funny fact, as I'm working on this I tell my husband "you know what song just wont stop playing in my head? "I'm gonna pop some tags" by Macklemore"
He says to me "it's because you have the Goodwill card out"
I say "ugh, that's so funny, I didn't realize that, now I wanna go thrift shopping."
After I was done with a few of the shelves I wasn't liking how the pine cabinets and the wall behind was looking with the contact paper so I thought about painting them. It began to dawn on me this project was almost never ending! I mean all I wanted was a cup of tea and then I was lining the shelves with contact paper and now I wanted to paint the inside of the cabinets. Our kitchen has been under construction with this little project for a couple days now. I told my husband I was going to leave the inside without painting for now because it would be easier if I could remove the doors so I should leave that for when we had planned to repaint the cabinets in the summer.
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| You can't see it here but the wall behind was stained and yellowed |
What happened next was unforeseen, my husband says "take the doors out, we will do it this weekend", I asked "do what this weekend?" He said "paint all the kitchen cabinets", I told him "if we are going to paint them we have to do everything the right way, that means we have to sand them and all that" and he said "yes, I know!" I told him, "don't tease me I have the drill on my hands!"
Next thing you know I'm removing doors and we are in the middle of an even bigger project now! The outside of the kitchen cabinets are getting a makeover too, I told you this was a never ending project. We are now on week two of working on the cabinets, my kitchen and dinning room are "Hazardous Work Zones!!!" We have been sanding, striping, priming... I can't wait to see the finish line and share the results of course!