Wallpaper -be-gone

I wish it were that easy!! After my rant on taking down the wallpaper in our kitchen and never putting wallpaper up in my house I was feeling a little discouraged by the amount of work I had already put in and the lack of results. My hubby actually got a 3 day weekend over Labor Day and he really helped get me back on track. When we left off I was here.

Not quite a third of the way done. I am proud to say that after last weekend we are now looking at this-

As you can see from the pictures we encountered a few not quite so great surprises.

When the electrician was here back in May there was an issue in the kitchen with the rewiring and he ended up having to replace the wiring to the ceiling fan. When replacing that wiring he found what was most likely an outlet under the wallpaper. We weren't totally sure what we were doing as far as the upper cabinets went at that point and if we were taking down the soffit I wasn't going to take down wallpaper so I didn't really think anything of it. Until I was taking down the wallpaper and found- not an outlet- but some nice scary wiring instead!

There actually were black marks on the wallpaper that was covering the wiring- so first thing after the holiday weekend I called. the electrician. He made sure it was disconnnected and we also dicussed rewiring and replacing the light over the sink because that one is a little scary too. Talk about old and crumbly.

We would like to be able to leave that light on if we have guests or even just for us once it starts to get darker earlier but the wiring scares us a little. Once we get him back to do the work we will have this beauty from Lowes over our sink.

Or at least that is the plan. I love the vintage-schoolhouse-light look of this light! I know plans change so I will let you know what we end up with!

The other issue we encountered in taking down the wallpaper was water damaged plaster.

Yuck. We knew there was water damage. The home inspector was the one that pointed it out initially and the bathroom is over the kitchen so we are thinking something must have leaked! So was it really a surprise? Ehh not really. The extent of it- yes! We have been researching how to deal with it. We aren't ready to paint yet so we have some time to figure out what we are going to do.

So you have probably guessed that we are keeping our upper cabinets for now. That is why we just took down wall paper instead of demoing the soffit. Since our bottom cabinets are finally ordered I need to start thinking about painting the top cabinets. There are a lot of amazing bloggers who have already tackled painting their kitchens and so there are a lot of resources to pull information from. I am a little intimidated by how much work there is to get them painted. Mostly I am not looking forward to having to empty all the cabinets. Good news is that the color sample of the bottom cabinets was dropped off today (thanks Dad!) to the paint store and they are matching it and we will pick the paint up tomorrow. Then the fun begins.

So it might not seem like huge progress but for us getting that wallpaper down was HUGE. It makes the kitchen look at lot bigger too! I will try to come up with a more comprehensive list of what is done and what is still left to do for my next kitchen update.

 We are celebrating my babies turning 2 tomorrow -even thought their birthday isn't until Wednesday. AND Aleena starts preschool on Tuesday. This is a big week coming up so I don't know how much stuff or blogging I will get done. But I am sure I will have more to share soon!!

~R