The girl behind the Lama: The Great Kitchen Facelift–Weekend #3

I really meant to get this update posted last week, but things just got crazy busy with the shop – and that’s a good thing! My apologies to the numerous friends that harassed me this weekend!!

So where were we? Counters – prepped, sanded, painted, chipped. That brought us from here to here:

So we had to let everything dry for 24 hours before we moved on. Short stuff got a fun day at the pool with grandma and grandpa, we got … more sanding? Yep. Fist up was to remove all of the loose chips. First you vacuum up what you can. Then you take a scraper and scrape away any chips that aren’t quite attached. Vacuum up these chips, then take sand paper and sand it until it’s smooth to the touch.

This actually proved to be quite challenging. You need everything to be smooth. Your final counter will be as smooth as you sand it. Great! Sand away right? Not so much. If you sand too much you sand away all the chips that are there and are left with nothing but paint – not good. The backsplash and front edge areas were the most difficult. It was really hard to get in all the corners and make sure everything was perfect. The good thing is that if you goof up you can fix it! If you scrape away too many chips, you just apply more paint and throw more chips on it, let it dry and sand again.

All of that sanding now had us here:

It took us most of the day to get here. Every time we thought we were finished we took a bright light and scoured the counter for mistakes. Every time we looked we found bare areas or thin areas, and by the time you paint, let it dry again, sand, vacuum and wash again the whole day has gone by.

We had plans for a 4th of July BBQ at the country club so we worked until dinner time and enjoyed a fabulous family night. Short stuff didn’t hate the fireworks, but he definitely wasn’t too sure of them. He clung to the Mr. and watched them in the reflection of the building for awhile. We eventually got him to turn around, but he still wouldn’t let go of the Mr.’s neck. It was pretty cute.

So we get home around 10:30 and decided we just needed to finish the project. We looked for imperfections one more time and decided that we were happy and if there were blemishes – they were there and that would just be fine. One last step!!

The final step was to apply a 2 part poly top coat. You mix the two parts together and paint it on just like you did with the original black paint. It only took about an hour but we finally had these glossy counters!

Once the top coat is on, you need to wait 24 hours for light use and 7 days before you can resume normal use.

So what do we think?

We weren’t 100% impressed. The kit was fabulous and I think it was a great concept, but we were disappointed with the color. If you stick your nose up close to it, you can see the flecks, sort of:

From afar, it is really, really black and very shiny:

Now, I think it looks OK, but the box promised us this:

I guess in hindsight, it does look like the picture of the counter on the box, but we thought it would overall look more like the swatch picture.

So initially we weren’t happy. The Mr. (who never, ever complains about anything) actually complained to Rustoleum and just yesterday we got a check in the mail for $500 because we weren’t satisfied.

Now that we have more done in the kitchen and can see the overall picture I think we like it better. We still don’t love it, but I don’t think we hate it enough that we’ll replace it. Sure, it would be nice to have real granite, but the reality is that we can’t afford it and even if we could, it might be an upgrade that would out price our house for the neighborhood we live in. We know we’ll only be in this house for another year or two (we think) so right now all the renovations are really to make the house in a good place to sell and to make us happy enough with it to stay as long as we can.

So in the end, yes we like it. Was it worth the work? Absolutely. It’s a totally new space and a drastic improvement over what we had. Is it perfect? No. Good enough? Definitely.

So let’s recap. The kits contained almost everything, but here is what we needed for the project:
2 Rustoleum Countertop Transformation kits – $500
Extra sand paper – had on hand
Drop cloths – $4
9” microfiber roller – $5
6” foam roller – $2
Painters tape – Had on hand
Paint trays – $5
Paint brush – $4

Total cost of the project: $520
Refund from Rustoleum: $500

Actual cost of project: $20

Total cost of the project thus far: $233

One last shot of the before and after: