The original mission was to replace the dishwasher. This presented the question of whether it was time to address the tile countertops. Albeit out-of-date, they looked decent enough. But there was nothing practical about having grout on working surfaces.
What did that tile ever do to me? Why should it be cast out where it would spend the rest of eternity in a landfill next to a diaper full of shit? If I ever wondered whether a partial kitchen remodel could be justified, the black spots found underneath the wood trim by the sink eased some of the guilt I feel whenever there is waste. It was time.
Months after the demolition began, it was about a year ago on New Year’s Eve when Margo packed up her tools for the last time and drove off in her red pickup truck. But things were not done-done. The new Formica countertops and the white subway tile backsplash made the brass cabinet pulls look out of place. And next to a freshly painted wall that went from a sickly bisque to a dramatic blue (honestly, it mostly looks green to me, but either way it is dramatic), the dinginess of the back door bugged me. For the longest time I had a large swatch of white taped to it. It seemed better, but I wasn’t convinced that it was right.
Then I remembered hearing about how my niece had used wrapping paper on the walls of her apartment. So I taped a sample of Christmas paper to the door. Stunning! Then I taped an old cover of an art magazine to the door. I liked that too. It turns out that while our color choice might have been “dramatic” it was also neutral. A lot of things worked. Newspaper? That did not work. I settled on some remnant wallpaper that I rescued from a garage sale maybe 10 years ago. After making a template with some recycled office paper, I cut out half of the pattern. But when I tried to hang it up, I discovered that there was no tape in the world that was going to stick to the back of this wallpaper. I tried rubber cement. So much for that. There was always the wrapping paper, right? Tape will stick to that.
When I first got the idea to use magnets to hold the wallpaper to the metal door, I wasn’t convinced that it would be practical. The one magnet that I had that was strong enough for the job came from a gift shop at the Honolulu airport. It was a flower with a touch of bling in the center. It was perfect, but certainly too expensive; I thought I might need 50 of them.
Enter Axeman Surplus. They had some black disc magnets for 25 cents that were rated to hold a pound. In addition, they had loads of stuff I could use to dress up these generic magnets.
Unfortunately for Brian, the magnets worked great! He’s not a fan of this project. But so what? It’s not permanent. In fact, I have another wallpaper remnant that I can use whenever I want to change things up. And maybe after awhile, the door as it is won’t seem so horrible to me. Or I’ll find the right color and paint it. In the meantime, this is just fun.
[After painting the kitchen, this door needed something.]
[Here the door is half covered with some old wallpaper.]
[Magnets hold up the wallpaper on the metal door. I decorated a couple of cheap generic magnets with bike reflectors @ 30-something cents each. You can actually turn the lights on.]
[The white on the other side of the wallpaper is a template in the making. I used recycled office paper, a paper cutter and scotch tape.]
[Progress on the template.]
[Done! I didn’t have enough wallpaper to match up the pattern. Or maybe I should have worked from left to right? In any case, there wasn’t enough paper to avoid an extra seam in there. However, it doesn’t bother me.]