Discretion and all that… I went in last night to check the paint job before bed.  I took the curtains in as well.  The paint color was wrong.  It was both too close, and too far off to the background color of the fabric.  Too bland, and too pink. A dear friend assured me that the test sample and paint chip did NOT lie, but deceived me because next to what was ON the walls at the time was so hideous that even the off color looked fabulous in comparison.

So instead of embarking on tape removal and the risks thereof, I headed back to Home Depot.  After more test paints, I found a color I could live with and retrimmed and painted the kitchen.  Once dry, this looked good.  At least as far as I could tell in my current state of exhaustion.  Sufficiently dry, we returned to where we THOUGHT we were last night and began tape removal.  Yes, there had been a bit of paint creep but that was not the biggest problem.  The edge of the tape had allowed about a millimeter of unpainted (read that OLD finish/paint) space between the stained wood trim and the newly painted wall. Considering a solution for such an unexpected problem, I continued to remove tape.  Some places pulled away a bit of paint but nothing that couldn’t be solved by yet MORE work as part of the aforementioned solution for the miniscule but visible line.  Then tape removal along the edge of the counter top and backsplash began.  This time, up to one inch strips of paint were pulled off with the tape.  At this point, my relentlessly positive perspective went straight down the toilet. 

Claiming discretion is the better part of valor, I gave up and voiced my intention to save up money and have this job professionally done.  Dh is not convinced this is necessary.  I will be praying that God allows him to be convinced or the past four days of intense work and exhaustion ending in much poorer quality paint results than I’m used to achieving will not only extend indefinitely, but a whole ‘nother can of worms will be opened as well.

Sigh.  I didn’t have any trouble painting the house we moved out of for the buyers when we were moving up here. How much you wanna bet if I had WAITED and lived with hideous colors and painted for someone ELSE it would’ve gone just fine. *mutter sputter*

No. I am NOT artistic.  I’m painting my kitchen.  Well, FIRST I had to strip wallpaper. Two different kinds.  I started with the low border that went around the breakfast area.  Paper Tiger, some hot water/vinegar mxture sprayed on, and it came off… easy peasy.  It was with hope (liberally laced with trepidation) that I tackled the heavier looking – but just as tacky - wallpaper that made up the ‘backsplash’ in the kitchen area.  Imagine my delight when it came off almost as easily as the other.  With relief, I handed the job over to my eldest daughter and headed to Home Depot for paint supplies.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the job well done and complete upon my return… until I began working on taping off so I could begin priming.  I found that the backsplash wallpaper was peeking out from beneath the upper cabinets.  Upon questioning, Pumpkin informed me that the paper had extended up behind the cabinets (obviously) and that she had great difficulty removing it as much as she had.  It took another two hours, more of the hot water solution, and some needletip tweezers to get enough removed from up behind the cabinets so that it was no longer visible and the backsplash could be properly painted.  Speculation on how hard it would be to find the idiot contractor who installed cabinets over at LEAST an inch of wallpaper ran rampant. 

As if that weren’t enough, the area below the paper in the breakfast area was painted one of the most repulsive shades of teal I’ve ever seen.  Also, in the main kitchen area, someone had stenciled some flowers in the same colors as the tacky wallpaper and the nasty teal paint around close to the ceiling.  So, primer was necessary. Six. Coats. Of. Primer. I have NEVER had a paint that required SIX COATS of primer to cover. Between some of the coats of primer and the final coat of color, I spent over 12 hours straight painting JUST today.  Yesterday was only slightly less intense.  I’m hoping that tomorrow’s inspection will show NO need for a second coat and the tape can be removed from the trim. 

That is where the third chapter of the story will either begin, or end.  The wood trim is stained wood, not painted white.  So if the paint has traveled under the tape, the job just gets ugly.  As if it hadn’t already.  A friend assures me that even in such an eventuality, it couldn’t POSSIBLY look worse than it did before I began.  Some help she is.   

She’s right about one thing.  Even with the blue painters tape still up it looks better than it did.