Making an Entrance

 One night, I was standing in my kitchen and looked at what was on the other side of that door. That is the door that we use daily. That is where the family comes and goes; where we welcome friends and family. My grandmother always referred to it as the "side door" because the kitchen door was on the side of the house before this addition. To say it was a mess is an understatement. 

The carpet was pulled up but never replaced. the plywood floor was like a trampoline. That light fixture was old, ugly, and broken. Mostly though, it was full of clutter. I could blame it on the kids, and they certainly didn't help, but I allowed them to dump everything there and I did as well. The rest of the house was no this cluttered. this was the dumping ground.

As I stood at the top of the steps looking at the disaster, I had an epiphany. I was barricading the door. Somehow my subconscious had decided that I would be safe if I could keep everyone out. I had lived in fear and in a state of crisis for so long, that I still didn't feel safe. Well, I wasn't living that life anymore. I was safe. I didn't need the barricade. 

As soon as I realized what I had been doing, I started cleaning it up. I stopped to snap these "before" shots a few minutes into cleaning so I could track my progress. I didn't need to gut the space like I did with the bathroom, but there was some dismantling to be done.

I have lived here nearly 20 years and I had NEVER looked in that crawl space over the kitchen. It was FULL of empty boxes. I did also find a box and a bag of my grandparents' things and gave them to Mom. I also found some spare house parts - but more on those later.

I took all of the doors off of the crawl space and the pantry and removed the flimsy, sagging MDF shelves from the pantry.

then I scrubbed a few decades of nicotine and tar off of the walls. I more or less mopped the walls with a diluted solution of Awesome cleaner from the Dollar Tree. It lives up to its name, but it was still a lot of elbow grease involved.

The coat hooks were mostly broken, so I took them all off and sanded it down to give it a new look (more on that project later too)

Then came time for the floor... for years I was terrified to tackle this project because I had NO IDEA what was under there and I wasn't sure that I wanted to know. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find an intact concrete slab. it had been sealed with paint at one point before covering so it was in great shape. I pried up the plywood and sleepers, patched the holes,  scrubbed it clean, and applied a new sealer coat to prepare for the new floor.

With everything stripped down, I was ready to start putting it back together again. I started with priming the wood - walls, ceiling, cabinet doors - All the wood! I used the OG Killz oil-based primer. I wasn't going to mess around. I did open both the front and back doors and windows for cross ventilation and set up a couple of fans. This stuff works, but it's not great on the lungs. I also had to use a thick nap roller to get in all of those grooves. The brick was protected with a drop cloth because I loathe painted brick. 

Come back next week and I will show you some of my projects and what parts I found in the crawl space.