Where is the Butler?!

I finally decided to tackle one of our favorite pieces in the entire house… the butler’s pantry cabinet. The pantry itself has been removed over the years but we do have the cabinet remaining which makes us pretty fortunate!

50’s – ish butler pantry

It does appear that the woodwork has never been painted which is great! There is plenty of paint splatter on the cabinet which has taken some time to get removed. It has allowed us to see all of the colors that area has been painted in 112 years.

When we got the house, the entire bottom shelf of the glass cabinets was falling out of the bottom and had sagged more than an inch. The wallpaper on the inside of the cabinet was forest green and the upper’s have a yellow and green pattern. The wallpaper has been peeling off so it was finally time to remove it and explore (there is always an exploration when removing wallpaper).

 

Some of the shelves are warped, have years of caked on oil and god knows what and paint on them. The shelves immediately went to the basement to get cleaned and sanded. The wallpaper was then removed revealing…more wallpaper!!!

I guess it was easier to wallpaper over wallpaper back in the day. 9 times out of 10 I have found nothing but damaged plaster walls behind wallpaper. Luckily, I have become pretty good at plaster work, so I don’t mind repairing walls too much.

Now to fix the sag in the wood and clean up the shelves.

 

Well, here we go with the last leg of this what I thought was going to be small…large project!

Walls were primed with oil based paint and sanded to smooth out any residual glue from wallpaper, imperfections and just get the surface ready to take as much paint as possible. I decided to go with paint so that when I feel like making a quick change or feel in the kitchen, it won’t take much to slap a different color on the walls.  My ADHD requires me to think ahead.

Drumm Roll please… ( Lighting is difficult in my kitchen so some pictures are better than other).