They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm sure later in my life I will look back on these last weeks and wish I had the problems that I do now, but let me tell ya, this little kitchen move almost did me in. I would also like to share the story because maybe, just
maybe there will be someone who is as clueless as we were and won't launch into a project that could be poisonous. I'll start from the beginning...
So we had no plans of moving, but a great deal popped up that we just had to take, which landed us in a charming little house about a block and a half away from where we were living. We are still renting,which might make this story a tad ridiculous, but as we were moving in, Mr. Hungry decided to redo the kitchen cabinets. I know that sounds crazy to do as a renter, but he has lots of interest in me being happy in the kitchen and to be quite honest we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I didn't take the best before photos, but basically you can see that the kitchen cabinets do not close. Apparently, the hinges had been painted over about 5 times and the cabinets would no longer shut. They were pretty dingy too so one late Sunday, Mr. Hungry started scraping away, full of hope and determination.
These cabinets are not just left open... they did not shut.
Dingy...
The culprit of the cabinets not shutting... hinges that have been painted over quite a few times.
Flash forward to the next day, Mr. Hungry gives me the job of cleaning the hinges since we can't find that are similar and finds that scraping about 5 layers of paint off of cabinets is no walk in the park. With about 2 out of 10 cabinets scraped, we decide we need an electric sander. I go to sleep that night with an over excited Mr. Hungry in the kitchen who is just blasting away at the paint.
The next day, I continue to work on moving the rest of the stuff and start to research how I can take paint off of the hinges. One link led me to another and I started reading about lead paint. Long story short, I find that sanding old paint is extremely dangerous and if it contains lead, you could get lead poisoning and basically turn into a vegetable. I'm about to faint thinking about how Mr. Hungry has just been huffing this stuff for about 3 days. I mean
look, I don't think you could get any closer to this stuff. {sidenote: we are still not sure if there was lead in the paint, but the test kit takes two weeks to get results in the mail, and this house was built in 1942 so the chances were pretty high}
Enter day 4 (which seems like day 22) when I go pick up a respirator. I had also read reports that you could absorb this stuff through your skin so poor Mr. Hungry spent the next two days with most skin covered in the blazing Houston heat sanding away.
After working day and night for two weeks, the kitchen was done... I could hardly believe it. And while this all seems manageable, I for some reason was having a melt down thinking that Mr. Hungry could become a vegetable because of this silly little renovation. Anyway, the whole thing already seems a bit comical when I see the pics of what seems to be an alien redoing the kitchen....
Moral of the story: Check for lead paint before tackling a painting project that has anything to do with old paint!
Once again, thank you Mr. Hungry for this amazing kitchen. I promise to make you lots of macaroni and cheese in here.
On top of that, there has been a broken oven, refrigerator and water heater that are now all taken care of. But finally,
finally, I'm back with a fully functioning kitchen. I will be back with pics of the new (and not so new features) of the new little kitchen and for goodness sake, I'll get back to the recipes!
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