Sinking Feeling

The tools of the trade

Someone commented to me after seeing the A Peek in My Drawers Post, that they wouldn't put so much into a rental.  Normally, I wouldn't either and I didn't in our previous apartment.  But after living in a home for thirteen years in which we could improve as we wanted, I look at things differently.  I'm used to affecting my environment and personalizing it with my tastes and likes.

Contact paper, hot glue and paint are fairly cheap.  They do take a little time to apply, but the joy I have on seeing the end results are worth it.  And if I can open my cupboards and drawers and feel joy instead of revulsion, so much the better.

Case in point, the space under the kitchen sink.  I've been putting this one off, because every time I looked under there, I shuddered.  Let me show you why:

A Peek In My Drawers

Today I'm going to show you my drawers.  But first, see the dish cupboard above, with dishes that I promised to show you in the Cupboard Anthropologist post.  They look so clean and happy in their new home.

But then, I decided what we needed next, was to put utensils, towels, wraps and Ziplocks somewhere.  That's generally the domain of drawers.  I have four of them and two were easily done.  But the remaining two, were not.  

Sometime in the past, someone thought it was a good idea to glue linoleum to the bottom of the poor little drawers.  The linoleum was now peeling up away from the glue.  I had two options - try to glue the stuff back down or pull it out and see if I could clean it up and cover the glue.  I chose the latter option because frankly, the linoleum and glue smelled bad.

This is what the poor drawers looked like underneath:

Cupboard Anthropologist

The mudroom into the kitchen

We're moved in and are living out of boxes.  Unpacking the kitchen has been a challenge.  I've decided to cover the shelves with contact paper, but first I have to remove the old stuff. 

Each cupboard and drawer has told me a different story as I excavated the layers of past strata.  One cupboard held three layers of contact paper; 90's tan filigree, 80's heart wreaths, 70's checkered green and then underneath, pistachio green paint.  On some shelves linoleum has been affixed from different decades.  Inside the structure there's an even older hint of yellow paint.  

I wonder about those before me.  Why not cover everything in one pattern?  Why do some places and not others?  And why oh why, did none of you just update the whole kitchen?

In its defense, all the cupboards are very well built.  Nice thick sturdy wood, every door still fits tightly still.  The original hinges and handles are still shiny and in good working order.  It's like going back in time while trying to live modernly.

Here's the before of one of the cupboards: