The trigger

I looked at our kitchen on Saturday morning and hated it.  There are a thousand things that irritate me about it but the one thing that hit me in the face on Saturday was just how grubby it looked.

It wasn’t the kind of grubby that a bit of cleaning could fix, although there was a bit of that (particularly cobwebs and dust).  It was mainly the paintwork which had just deteriorated over time.

Somehow damp has made its way into some plaster on one wall which gave it a crazed effect akin to a paint crackle effect.  Added to this there was a small gap between the coving and the wall.  Every time anyone walked around in the bathroom above the gap released plaster dust over the kitchen work surface.  This meant that no sooner had the kitchen surfaces been cleaned they would need cleaning again.  It also meant that food couldn’t be stored there.

Also, and this is something I’ve not seen in anyone else’s kitchen, whenever I’ve peeled vegetables the walls have been sprayed with the juice from the potato, carrot or whatever.  I haven’t noticed this when it happened but, over time, this has made the wall look grubby, and it’s impossible to clean.

And then, of course, we have had children since the kitchen was last painted and there are grubby finger marks everywhere.

Something needed to be done.