Today I will be sharing the fun of prepping and repainting my kitchen. I’ll be going over how to ( and definitely how NOT to) tape and repaint your kitchen, both in this blog post and in the videos found here in this post.
If you cannot tell from the video and the pictures here on the post, I am a non-professional painter!
If you want to see the video of my kitchen repaint trials and tribulations you can watch here:
I’m just going to go through the hot mess that was in our kitchen at the old place we had been renting. I waded into what should have been a short project, and lo and behold!- turned it into a 3 day, 4-star cluster!
Getting Started
We had to repaint this as a couple of damaged spots you can’t see it right here down by that mop where we had a cat that liked to eat drywall very strange cat indeed! This is where we got started.
Color matching
We painted over that. It wasn’t quite the right color match. This is a pale yellow and we went about the business of taking care of that. We decided we were going to paint it a little bit brighter yellow.
Here is what the old paler yellow looked like. And here is what the new brighter yellow turned out looking like side by side. The pale yellow is n the door to your right and the brighter one is on the left.
Taping
Let me go back to the official pre-taping… here’s where I got started taping.
The thing is this, It’s truly my fault. It’s what I like to refer to as a “man moment” The wife sent me to the store for an inch or one inch and a quarter blue tape which is the stuff that looks like this here below…
The 1.25 inch blue painter’s tape is real nice. But we did not have anymore. We ran out of the blue tape after doing the hallway and only starting to tape a very small amount of the kitchen.
So, I was tasked with getting more tape to finish taping the kitchen with. So I ran out and went to The Dollar Store….they did not have any more blue tape at all and we needed tape right away.
So I had used 2-inch masking tape for painting when I was 16 (a long time ago) and thought I’d grab that and be good to go!
With the two-inch masking tape, you see how thick that the masking tape is. That’s the masking tape here in the picture:
This was the original pale yellow color not that you can tell these dots are my camera I got something on the freaking lens but anyway, this masking tape is wide enough – and one of the things that I thought it would be great for – is as you can see here in this picture.
That tape is wide enough that when you get the roller right to the edge it’s thick enough to catch any paint from your roller.
I thought that I had it made in the shade…. BOY was I WRONG.
Here again, is the brighter yellow that we were going for called “wake up yellow” so we’re painting over a pair pale yellow with a brighter yellow so that would be a fairly simple trick. Or so we thought…
Crown molding
The other trouble we would come to have was the crown molding which was about as even as a pissed-off cat’s back. You see this whole house was built in the 1930s I believe and there wasn’t a level spot to be had
We had our work cut out for us as far as that goes. We did have some blue tape that was left over we got that. The blue tape looked good so far.
But then once we get it done as you can see below.
Holy crap was that bright! I wish in retrospect that I was half as bright as that paint! Then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten into the rest of this mess that you’ll be reading about…Just saying…
I’ll give you another example of how bright it was. Well, you get an idea how bright it was that is the old yellow and that is the new yellow so it’s way richer.
At that point, we knew we had to pivot the plan because that bright color would not fly with the landlord or the next tenants.
Didn’t like the paint
We decided that was way way way too frigging yellow! I mean we painted and finished in the evening and then once we got back and it all dried and we took a look at it- it’d just about rip your eyeballs right out of your head!
The other wonderful thing was that we also had some heat and humidity at that point and the two-inch masking tape that I thought would be so stellar to protect the windows and started to curl so that provided another challenge.
You can see it curling right here it had caught some paint which is great. That’s its intended purpose. But it would come back to bite us later.
We decided to go with this tan color. Just something basic, just something simple so that’s what we got that very very light tan color.
You can see what we did here is we went way wrong with our color because of the way it looks on the card we thought it’d be a nice bright yellow but it is way too bright yellow.
Masking tape stuck to paint
You couldn’t even capture with the camera here just rip your eyeballs out so we went with this tan and what I had already done is I used that two-inch masking tape which at this point had to stay so that the repaint would match….Or so I thought at the time… like I will show you here the problem is this masking tape stuck to the paint after I got done painting and it would only get worse moving forward.
Here is why you don’t use masking tape
One coat of the beige did not cover the super-duper “neon scare ya yellow” so I did two coats which is fine until this very very good paint decides to become one with the masking tape!
It was cool when I applied the tape but then the hot days hit and it heated and curled!
If you don’t curl it straight down, it’ll come out onto this and peel the actual two coats of paint off so yeah good fun.
Two coats of paint
So I don’t know if you could hear that but what that was is me bemoaning the aspects of the fact that yes the beige did cover up the bright bright wake-up yellow but I had to do two coats they had a one coat guarantee. (Which is foolishness!) I thought we’d be good to go and it was not robust enough so I had to do two coats!
You can see what happens in the corner here as I’m peeling up from the paint you see that crown molding (which was older than dirt) and you can see that right here as I’m running my knife down it…
Two layers of paint became one with the masking tape so what that does for you is then you end up pulling off the new paint. Along with the old paint, and whatever was under that.
That’s not the best quality photo but you can see that that’s foolishness so you just worked against yourself.
So in conclusion to that, you could say use your one-inch or two-inch blue tape that’s what it’s there for so finally we got that done we painted it tan up to the edge except for over the sink which we left yellow as you see here…
We left this part yellow because it just looked like a nice pop of color here when doing the dishes. So imagine- that’s how bright it would have been all over this room.
I had that tape that came away from that edge between the tan yellow here I had to hand paint it.
Project took three days
So this project all in all took about three days total. So between the first yellow application (which is way too bright) all the edging, all the taping, and then covering it back up with the beige it was quite the project!
The beige is forgiving on the ceiling line what we had done is hand-painted it and once in a while a roller would slip and it would get onto the ceiling so that kind of sucks when that happens or we did we had gloss white to cover it.
In this picture, you see right here where it popped up onto the ceiling:
So what I did is I took a piece of paper and did a straight edge so it only it finally all came out looking decent.
I’ll show you the big picture here and what this is this is about three days’ worth of time maybe a hundred dollars worth of paint. Granted it only would have been 30 40 bucks worth of paint if it was not for my screw-up.
You can see that roof line’s even and because the cat had damaged that wall with its pica (eating of strange strange drywall) we repainted the kitchen beige.
We repainted the front hallway which went swimmingly because it was a smaller area and we had the right tape on all of it.
Getting our security deposit back
The repainting project was a condition of us getting a security deposit back.
So three days’ worth of work, we got an eleven hundred dollar security deposit back. TOTALLY worth it!
Even factoring in the $150-200 (after food fuel travel back and forth to the dollar store for tape and sweat equity) it was definitely a good trade!
It all finally turned out just fine and the walkthrough went wonderfully…
So in closing
I’m telling you to go get the BLUE painter’s tape – the blue tape that’s made for painting, and make sure you take your time to line it up really well!
I did I did not know there was wide tape because I was in a hurry. I thought there was only narrow blue tape but there is wide two-inch and wider blue tape that will behave much better!
My other thing is when you do paint next to the tape please please please always remember to paint lightly by the tape!
Don’t do a heavy coat of paint near the tape! It will complicate things if it gets on and it is that’s heavy and thick. The wide tape is nice to stop your roller real quick but be sure to go light and kind of blend that out in between light coats by the tape.
There’s also the fact that, after reading this, you’re going to be smarter than I was and you’re going to use the blue tape! It’ll be far more forgiving! It’s just enough to catch the roller but due to its makeup, it will cause you less peeling once it’s dry and it comes time to remove the tape.
Now if you want to be secure about it not peeling what you can do is what I showed you in that video you just take your Exacto knife or whatever fine-bladed sharp object you have and go right around the base of the tape where the tape meets the paint and slowly peel it off that way.
Don’t peel it off to the side just peel it down upon itself and you can hold something on it (like I did with my finger) to anchor it so that in fact the tape separates from the paint.
That was the three-day adventure of wonderfulness…
That blue tape will serve you better in the long run whether it’s narrow or wide.
I learned I might rather hire somebody for a couple of hundred bucks to do this than have to do it again myself
That being said, I learned a whole bunch of lessons I was trying to pass on to you here which are to use blue tape use the right tools, and make sure you unseat your tape after you have painted.
I’ll give it another try sometime. Just not while I’m under the gun (in other words time limitation).
That’s what I learned about being an amateur painter – there’s a reason amateur painting is usually left to canvas and “happy little trees” scenes. Because amateur house painting is not the most fun thing to do for sure!
My advice is if you’re in a rush, pay the painters and leave it to the professionals or educate yourself well ahead of time before launching into your project.
I’ll show you the starting point again here:
That’s the starting there is then the end product is pictured here in these pictures:
The blood sweat and tears – well no blood thankfully – and the end product you’re looking at was well worth it.
Another tip: a magic eraser will take off paint if you happen to have any splatters on the floor, countertops, or any other surface. I also found a good thing that they have commonly available now is- industrial-grade sanitizing wipes that you can find pretty much everywhere now.
I am referring to these bleach-based wipes that work well too. They work much better. Especially for those of us who hate scrubbing. All you do is vigorously wipe it down with the bleach wipe, then follow it with a dry cloth and wipe it dry.
All right, my friend, I’m done for now telling you how to paint (really how not to paint)!
I truly hope you enjoyed this blog post about “The Fun Of Prepping And Repainting My Kitchen.”
For more wild and crazy stuff like this video or this blog post feel free to comment like subscribe and share this around anywhere you see fit!
Heck, even if you just want to flame me for a horrible job in painting feel free! Just leave a comment down below or anywhere around this video to tell me how to do it better next time! I’d appreciate the advice!
Talk to you soon! See ya later!
Your friend,
Seely Clark IV
