Labor Day & a Labor of Love

Well as many of you know, we undertook the project of redecorating the kitchen in mid-August. It has been quite laborious at times ranging from removing 2 layers of wallpaper, to Venetian plastering for the first time with its many steps and then to the debates over room decorations. For the most part the room is complete minus some finishing touches but wanted to post on the progress. Once my order comes from Ebay and one other major item is changed, it may become a success.

Before I proceed further, I have to thank my dear husband for putting up with all my craziness on this project. I finally put the finishing touches on my scrapbook inspired table project late yesterday afternoon and he carefully polyurathened it for me. Last night before going to bed we were looking at our nearly completed kitchen. I'm surprised he didn't shoot me when I said that I didn't like the table in our now classy looking kitchen. Would he be upset if I used it in another room and get a new table instead? So he was fine with that, even though I had spent countless hours on the table and had ordered 6 new chairs in order for our family of 5 to all sit in matching chairs. So the table will now be relocated to another room, either the scrapbook room or the dining room. I feel another redecorating project in the making if it goes into my currently mauve and wine colored dining room.


He also has put up with my countless trips to the store for decorative items. But then again I put up with his idea to put lights above the cabinets, which I love but it was a large debate to find the right lights for the vision. We also had great ideas that seemed great at the time, but later weren't totally to plan. You can visit his blog he just started to find out more about that. Be warned that he is new to blogging but also a bit of a geek, although a wonderful geek that I am so fortunate to have as my husband. http://live2model.blogspot.com/

After much debate about my found metal words in copper tones, we followed a wise woman's advice and hung the 3 words I currently had instead of 13-15 different metal words all in different fonts and sizes I saw on Ebay. That is what I was trying to figure out in the picture with the pieces of paper stuck to the wall. Thanks Kathye for the great advice. Don't particularly like the word spirit, so I am in search of a replacement word. Got a Meijer in your area? Please look for me or if you find cool metal words somewhere, let me know.



So here is the transformed kitchen from wallpapered, birdhouse, Pfaltzgraff Naturewood inspired (see earlier post) to Venetian plastered, glass bottles/vases and grapevines. I've already swapped out a few pieces from when I took these pictures this morning, so if you want to see it in its current state, then stop by for a visit. I remembered this morning on my way to visit my Grandmother that I had a few wonderful glass pieces that she had given me that I would love to showcase rather than some meaningless but pretty pieces of glass.

Still need to get 2 new bettas for the island bowls, paint and decorate my altered bulletin board, repaint some hanging half-buckets to use for mail, get a new table and possibly new chairs, a new throw rug, paint the word family in black, fiddle with getting the curtains/scarves to hang appropriately, get my ebay shelves and hang them in the connecting hall and decide if the wall of doors both near the laundry and the 3 on the opposite wall need something to break up the sea of green. Any suggestions, please offer them.


My favorite areas of the room are above the cabinets, the cool copper cross I hung in the window and the actual curtains (not thrilled with the way they are hanging yet but help is on the way this week). One other thing I love about my curtains are that they remind me of my best friend. Why you ask? Well I am talking to her on the cell phone while shopping and she tells me that she finally found curtains for her living room. Can you believe they are the same exact curtains I had in my hand at that very moment? So I think these curtains were meant to be my daily reminder of her even though she is thousands of miles away.


Close up of curtains:









Close up of Venetian plastering (or at least my version of it):

The pictures don't truly show the beauty of pieces above the cabinets. I'll try and take some better ones soon. Too tired to do that now. Thanks for letting me share yet another redecorating project. Not sure what has gotten into Michael and I, but this is now the fifth of 12 rooms in the house that we have redecorated in 2006.