Craft No. 5

My uncle is a carpenter. Ever since I was a wee bug, he’s been making amazing kitchens for Connecticut’s rich and famous. And over the years, as my family and my aunt’s family moved back in state, he’s even made kitchens for his in-laws. (And an office for Papa V.!) His latest project was a new kitchen for Sister V. and, even though I haven’t seen it yet, I’m sure it’s as beautiful as the rest.

But there’s a problem with growing up with an amazingly talented carpenter uncle (who cut short his snowbird season – during the worst winter ever – to come to our wedding because he is just that awesome). You get spoiled. You assume every kitchen is as nice as the ones in your family. And then you run headlong into a mess of barely-laminated particleboard and receive a very rude awakening indeed.

Cue our kitchen. The room itself is the largest in the house – its one, true saving grace – but the rest leaves something to be desired. I’ve been complaining about it for a while now, but since I’ve recently spoken to others with the same amount of counter space and less overall room, I’ll keep the whining to a minimum here. I can’t do much about most of it, but there is one thing I can change: the knobs.

Cute in a Holly Hobbie sort of way, but not my style. Those flowers have got to go.

The transformation started with a serious scrub down for both the cabinets and the knobs. Everything was covered in that sticky grime that comes with grease, time, and a particular disdain for cleaning. (Don’t judge. We’ve only been here two months. This stuff was years old.) I decided to paint all the knobs and pulls silver because I’m all about retro-fabulous. And what screams “1950s!” more than chrome?

In my craft trunk - yes, it’s an actual trunk - I had a can of silver spray paint leftover from my senior year of high school when I decided to ditch 20 years of childhood collections and paint everything in my room one color. (I was coming off a year of living out of a suitcase. I couldn’t handle the clutter.) Did my can of almost-ten-years-old spray paint work? Why yes, yes it did. (Actually, it leaked all over my hand, but it did that when it was new too.) Did I like it? Eh. Not so much.

I almost missed the flowers at this point. (See the unlaminated underside of my counter? Grrr…)

The knobs came out less silver and more gray, which was not the look I was going for. So on to Plan B. When in doubt, what do architects do? We make things white. Perfect. I even had a slightly-younger can of white spray paint in my trunk. (This can was left over from the time I made a disaster of a model and tried to salvage it with paint. Did that work? Not so much...)

And you know what else? It didn’t really work this time either. You'd think I learn.

Snap, crackle, pop. What a disaster.

So I finally broke down and went to Michael's for a new can of 21st century paint. I returned a bottle of black Rit from an ancient project that never happened, so the paint was, in a sense, free-to-me-now. (Thank you, past self, for working so hard to support my craft habit.) The paint went on much cleaner, albeit super thin, so I had to do about 15 coats to hide the gray and reach a nice finish. (Poor Bert. It's tough to open the silverware drawer without its knob.) But at long last, may I present to you, my slightly improved kitchen:

Notice anything? Why yes, my secret to better "after" photos is clearing off my counter (or at least moving it out of the frame). But that's not what I'm talking about. Look closer. The pulls on the top cabinets are all missing. And there lies the disappointing part of this whole undertaking. Spray painting the pulls - even with new and improved paint - simply didn't work.

It ran. It pooled. It splattered. It refused to dry. It dried too fast. And at the end of the day, it just looked like crap.

So I'm on to Plan C for the pulls: sand them down and paint them by hand. Plan D? Throw them out and splurge at Anthro. Sometimes, there's so much even I can do. ;)