Tin and Champagne for Mother's Day!

Mother's Day weekend was warm and fuzzy as usual. My daughters and their families always go out of their way to make it meaningful and fun with cards and handmade gifts from grandchildren, hugs and kisses and lots of love.

This time my younger daughter Lisa gave me a rather untraditional gift -- free labor and supplies to finish the kitchen that I tore up a year and a half ago. My small galley kitchen has been through several looks and was due for a major re-do from its green and mauve wallpaper to its green and mauve paint and stencilled cabinets. Having had all the floors redone with a laminate oak, it was time. I tore the reachable parts of the wallpaper down, cleaned the cabinets thoroughly to ready them for painting, and replaced two of the major appliances and then stalled out! Part of the pantry area got primed but mauve and dark green paint still showed through the open gally kitchen.

Now a year and a half later, Lisa announced we were finishing up. We purchased light blue for the walls, apple green for the cupboard doors and some of the woodwork, and tin look-alike panels for the back splash. We also, of course, purchased everything we needed to do the project as well -- it only took three trips to Lowes -- not too bad. After all, it took us three trips to two grocery stores to get everything for our afternoon dinner on Mother's Day.

After our Saturday morning visit to Lowes, we stopped at Kai's baseball game to catch an inning or two, then went home to paint. Approximately seven hours later, we had painted the cupboard doors, the basement door, and woodwork with two coats of apple green, and all the walls with the light blue. We decided it was easier to paint two coats of the blue over the wallpaper than to try to take it down. We went more with a Trading Spaces approach than HGTV with our painting!

We knew the challenge all along would be the tin panels: Lisa had watched it applied on HGTV several times and we had written directions to use as a last resort. How hard could it be? The first surprise was how difficult it was to cut. I had brought home a rotary cutter and mat and was disappointed it didn't even make a dent. This stuff isn't real tin but it's certainly as sturdy. We went to utility knife and the only scissors I had which are actually paper scissors I let Kai and Quinn use when they want to do projects. After trying to measure and mark it, we did read the two sets of directions carefully and discovered a method that worked. We dry fit every piece before going to bed. After a shower, I felt human enough to fall into my bed and was sound asleep by midnight in spite of aching knees and feet.

Bright and early Sunday morning, we were at 8:30 am mass to watch Kai serve. We stopped at Lowes and the grocery store (our third trips) on the way home. Since it was Mother's Day, Lisa had volunteered to prepare all the food except for what Jason would be grilling. We had two hours to prep all the food in my torn up kitchen and be at Laura's by noon. We arrived at 12:15 with hors d'vours and a crustless quiche straight from the oven. While the grill sizzled, everyone relaxed over great food and lemon granita champaigne cocktails. As always, it was lovely.

By 3:30, Lisa and I were back in my kitchen, glueing the panels to the wall. We had dry fit everything the night before; this should be the easy part. And it would have been, except we forgot to cut an opening for one of the electrical outlets and had to cut that piece of tin with glue already on it. Lisa's hands were so sore at this point from cutting the tin and squeezing out the glue, it was not an easy task. She did it though and the tin panels are finished and are brilliant!

I love the re-do and am so grateful to Lisa for inspiring me to finish and carrying the major load of the work. It makes me want to re-do the rest of the house. Are you reading this, Lisa?