Operation: Kitchen Renovation. Oy.

Yesterday evening after H and I got home from work, we took down all of the cabinets, removed all of the hardware and then began the long task of stripping the cabinets of their current varnish. To those who have not yet had the glory of this experience, it's not a *difficult* task, it's just time consuming and a lot of hard work.

We weren't yet sure whether we were going to be restaining the wood cabinets or painting, we needed to see what the wood underneath the current stain looked like, so we brushed, and scraped, and sanded, and cleaned, and underneath the ugly orange-y tinted varnish... was orange-y wood, but that's okay. Now, we have decided that we won't be able to acheive the look that we want by staining over orange-y wood, so we are now just going to give them a fresh coat of white paint.

The good news is that we won't have to deal with stripping the remaining 10 cabinets, we can just give them a good rub down with sandpaper, clean them up, prime them properly, and then slap on some paint. This will actually save us some time because we can skip a step.

Here's a glimse of the chaos ensuing at our home right now:

Here is a before shot, you can see the hideous faux-brick (ick!) and the complimentary orange-y cabinets. Lovely pairing.

Here's a shot of the ridiculousness that we uncovered when we removed the faux-brick. If you can't tell, that's an exposed wire connecting to the outlet, which was so conveniently located up against 20 year old particle board. Awesome.

This is what my hubby's face looked like after we uncovered the exposed wire asshattery. He's not pleased.

This is after we got all of the brick down. I'd be happier looking at that ugly dirty yellow wall for the rest of my life, than the disgusting faux-brick that was up there. Literally.

And here's what the kitchen looks like right now with all of the cabinet doors removed. On the plus side, it looks like we have a lot of storage, and if you want something you can just walk up and take it without having to deal with the extra step of opening a pesky door first. ::thumbs up::