The right-for-now way

When I left my last apartment, the couple moving in wanted to keep the paint I'd put up... but have me pay for repainting too in case the people after them didn't like it. I didn't really appreciate that so much so, in the end, it was repainted before they moved in.

Paint is one of the first things a lot of people change when they move into a new place and it makes sense. It's inexpensive, can make almost anything go from truly hideous to not that bad, and isn't overly time consuming.

Funny enough, those were the same criteria that led me to painting our kitchen.

The kitchen was bad when we moved in. Aside from the cobwebs covering everything, the illegal light hanging over the sink (you're not supposed to plug those into the outlet on your counter - go figure), the cabinets that had tenants of their own and about six square feet of counter space, there was also wallpaper, buckled plaster, and really, really bad paint.

Normally, I would suck it up and take down the wallpaper, deal with the plaster and get everything underneath into good working order before throwing a coat of paint on it and calling it a day. That said, we're going to be redoing the kitchen for real in just a few months and there was no reason to go through that now for what's really a band-aid fix.

Instead, I yanked the vinyl "backsplash" off the wall directly above the countertop. They'd probably been there for about 50 years - attractive, no?

Before

After

 Once I had that all chipped off (or at least level enough that I can get a backsplash in), I got to priming clean walls.

I do use paint+primer in one and it does make life a lot easier but I'm still a fan of sealing everything in with a solid first coat of high quality primer. Then I usually only need one coat and a few touch ups when I do go back with paint.

It's not particularly pretty, but it does work!

Once the primer dried, I could get some paint on those walls and make it look a little less like a dungeon.

Lots and lots of cutting in

To make the color, I mixed a little bit of white with the color we used in the bathroom. It made it look greener which worked out well.

It's amazing how much a coat of paint can change and while I can't wait to really get to it, this'll do for now!