The Histories: Kitchen-Hallway

The kitchen and hallway, and the house in general came with a feel that first seemed nautical but then more like a prairie farmhouse.

After finishing the pot rack, the Essex Green just wasn't working. Below is the kitchen originally. The kitchen is to be painted to match with the pot rack, and the hallway, and not clash too much with the cherry cabinets.

Here you'll see the changing of the chair rails and French door mouldings. And would you agree that the chair rail is too high? To me it looks off balance. So, the new chair rails are installed lower to the floor. And around the French doors is what's called brick moulding. Brick moulding is too narrow and you might agree it looks flimsy against the more stately French doors.

Step 1 was remove wallpaper in kitchen and hallway. The rented wallpaper-steamer below did a great job of dripping water down the walls, but it didn't take off the wallpaper. It could be the wallpaper was too thick or waterproof. I ended up removing the wallpaper by scraping off the top layer, then soaking the adhesive layer with vinegar. The remaining wallpaper scraped off easily after using vinegar.

Steamer....

After removing wallpaper, is what you see below. The Essex Green, that I used after installing the pot rack, is on the embossed wallpaper beneath where the regular wallpaper was. It's a beautiful green, but too strong and doesn't work here. The chair rail is also to be lowered. To lower the chair rail, I also have to remove the upper foot of embossed wallpaper beneath the original chair rail.

Below, I'm experimenting with new wall colors. Some colors I tried were too light, dark, pink, purple, red, warm, or cold. The doors are primered.

The white strip is where new chair rail will go. The above and below are the same photo. Below, I used a photo editor to stretch the photo to look more realistic. I did that with most photos in this post!

For new chair rail, I used a wider moulding typically used around doors. But it's the right look here, for me. The brick moulding is replaced by 5-inch wide boards along the French doors.

Here/s where I arrived at a final color scheme.

Final color scheme is below. I still need to install boards above the doors.

whoops, that Water tank label should have been removed!

HALLWAY

The hallway was originally done the same way as the kitchen:

I tried Essex Green in the hallway, when I did the pot rack. Besides that it seems too strong a green, it makes me realize that I want to go with a warmer color.

The chair rail itself was easy to pry out.

Embossed wallpaper wasn't too hard to remove from the hallway. In the kitchen, it stuck more to the dry wall, so took longer to scrape. In the hallway, the walls are cement plaster, with some old linoleum in some areas.

New experimental colors! White is where the new, lowered, chair rail will go. I need to use stained wood for the chair rails, to match the woodwork.

The scene at Home Depot, where I experiment with different mouldings and lattice to make a chair rail that fits in. I put together three types of wood strips, that will combine to make a nice wide chair rail. The original chair rail seemed too narrow.

The above must be stained. I tried to find the best match. Golden Oak seemed to work, but was too light. So, I went over it with amber shellac, and the match was better. It's not perfect, but good enough!

Before....