After struggling in other rooms to cover the nasty gold paint that had been sprayed in every room of the house I decided to try primer to cover it before painting. It surely couldn’t make it any worse.

I rolled primer on all the walls including the backsplash area even though I had no idea what I would end up doing with that area.

Color choice

I have to thank Jennifer at Ace Hardware. I went in undecided about what yellow to go with and she steered me to a paler shade than I was thinking. As soon as it went on the wall I knew I would have hated any shade more yellow than what I had bought. Ace, by the way, told me that I could bring the paint back if I didn’t like the color. Lowe’s and Home Depot won’t take returns when you make a bad color choice. I went with Straw and love it.

Problem area

The only problem was the corner over the stairway opening and the center of the wall along the stairs. I was able to roll it with my fiberglass extension. If you don’t have one of these, invest in one. I have used this more than I can believe and it keeps me from climbing a ladder when rolling the walls. It’s a great investment.

I always worry when setting up my 20′ ladder in precarious places when I am working alone. I don’t want to take a header off a ladder when there’s no one around to call 911. The dogs are very caring, but their dialing skills are somewhat lacking.

You can see the area that still needs to be cut in at the back corner and the wall behind the fan.

The corner wasn’t so scary — the ladder would be firmly braced against the stairs and leaning on the wall. That wasn’t so bad.

I set up the ladder and got the corner painted as far as I could. It left about 3 feet of the center wall not cut in. You can see it in the picture to the left. Groan.

There was concrete edging in the yard and tried a couple different configurations of stacking it on one step to level the ladder with the foot resting on a higher step. Need I say I was less than enthusiastic about actually climbing up this set up all by myself?

I did it one time. The cutting in needs two coats, but there was no way I was going up that ladder a second time. I was grateful there had been no disaster on my one trip and had no intention of pushing my luck.

I located an edging pad by Mr. Longarm that I had used in the past. I still had it, but the pad had deteriorated with age and wasn’t usable. I ordered another and plan to put it on the end of my fiberglass extension and wiping on a second coat while standing firmly on the kitchen floor by the stair railing. I don’t care how it ends up looking as long as I don’t have to go up that ladder again.

More tools I used and liked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s left

I still need to do the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. I need to figure out what I want to do as far as counter tops. After that I will decide what I want to do with the backsplash area.

The final touch will probably be a kitchen island. There’s plenty of room for it and the additional storage space would be wonderful. The options I’m looking at are a 36″ cabinet with a counter top or getting an island from Ikea. I’ll have to get farther along and do more research.