The Interior DIYer
DIY

DIY contact paper kitchen counters

Back in June of last year, in a renter-friendly attempt to update our kitchen, I added contact paper to a small section of our kitchen counter near our stove to test whether or not it would be a good idea to cover the rest of the kitchen counters. As you may have gathered from the title of this blog post, it worked out better than I had hoped, so a few weekends ago I committed to covering the rest of our counters! Cora, look after yourself. Mama has an idea and god help us all if it goes wrong.

I want to start by saying I love and appreciate dark spaces, don’t get me wrong [hello, dark romantic luxe]. But our galley kitchen was a little too dark at the best of times for a task-oriented space like a kitchen. There are dark cabinets [which I love], brown walls, grey tiles on the floor and dark brown mottled counter tops. It has a lot of really good elements, but there was a touch too much brown for one room [sorry, brown lovers]. Also, when I’m handling things like knives and preparing food, I prefer to be able to see my extremities and exactly what I am rhythmically chopping into.

I had the idea from the day we moved into our apartment to update the counters in a very renter-friendly way by using marble contact paper. I got the idea years ago from Linda of Make Do and DIY from her ultimate “new kitchen counter” cheat where she temporarily updated their kitchen using paint, gold duct tape and contact paper until they saved up to redo their kitchen. And it was legitimate beautiful. It worked for Linda, so it would work for us.

I started at the far end of our kitchen and using a card from my wallet, I peeled the back off the contact paper and slowly smoothed it across the counter [I wrote a detailed tutorial here on how to apply contact paper, should you be a bit nervous about applying it yourself. Contact paper is quite forgiving).

When it came to the sink, I wanted a really secure fit and didn’t want to simply cut the contact paper around the sink. I knew that in 6 months it would have crumbs and water and all sorts of things making it peel, so I loosened the sink fro, under the counter and asked Robert for help; Robert laid under the sink and carefully pushed the entire sink up to lift it about 3mm off the counter while I quickly used a card to smooth the small overhang of contact paper under the perimeter of the sink.

Despite how murdery this photo looks, I promise Robert is alive and safe.

I worked quickly and within 10 minutes, I had covered the awkward parts around the sink. I then tightened the joints under the sink and voila! The effort was 100% worth it.

You can see one of the seams above and a tiny air bubble along the side of the sink. No, it is not an overwhelmingly perfect job. I will be the first to admit that. But I will be the first to admit I am someone who is bothered by imperfections and I honestly say the very small few bubbles that are on the counter don’t bother me because they’re not as noticeable as the one above.

You can again see the original section I contact-papered above and below. This section of kitchen is the most used area and the place I wanted to test for at least 6 months before committing to covering all the counters. It has worked out so perfectly.

Occasionally, depending on what I’m cooking, things have stained the contact paper. Things like curry or tomato sauce. I at first freaked out, but surprisingly, after about a day or two of wiping counters [I don’t mean 48 hours of continual wiping … ], the stains completely dissappeared every time. So if you’re worried about stains in your kitchen, contact paper is very robust.

I am so happy with how our kitchen turned out and the best part is that when we move out of our apartment, I can undo it all in about 20 minutes. A perfect renter-friendly way to update any space, or if you’re like Linda, a great way to temporarily update your kitchen while you save to remodel it.

STATING THE OBVIOUS: contact paper is essentially plastic and is not resistant to high heat so should you decide to do the same, please use your judgement and do not place hot pots or pans directly on the contact paper because you will end up with what I can only imagine would be the after effects of when the Ghost Busters annihilated the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s not going to be pretty, but I know you’re smart and that you know better.

Other contact paper updates I’ve made:
– updating [and childproofing] our secondhand dining room table
– my agenda
– updated faux marble coffee table
– mini faux marble plinth

#DarkRomanticLuxe

Painted leather chair – six months later

I remember the day I decided to paint our thrifted leather chair from The Salvation Army. It was about 35°C when I started, and ended up being around 43°C when I finished. I was a hot mess to put it mildly, but it was so worth it.

In my original post about painting our leather chair with Fusion Mineral Paint, I promised to share my honest opinion of how well [or not-so-well] it held up six months later.

Simply put, it’s exactly the same as the day I painted it. No word of a lie. Not a scratch, no peeling, no scuffs, and no fading whatsoever. We’ve used our black leather chair every day since and it hasn’t shown any wear. It’s lasted through a harsh, humid summer and has since experienced a dry, cold winter. While it hasn’t been in the direct 48°C peak this summer nor the -40°C winter winds, inside our apartment has experienced the difference of high humidity then very dry, static-y air.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve put our Fusion Mineral Paint-ed chair through some pretty rigorous testing and has come out the other side perfect. Did I mention we also have a toddler? It has also survived her climbing, curious, energetic hands and thrashing limbs.

I would not hesitate to recommend using Fusion Mineral Paint on leather. Especially something that would get so much physical wear like a piece of furniture. I could not have hoped for it to work out more perfectly. It’s where I blog from the most and even where I’m sitting right now as I type.

Also featured in this post – secondhand baroque style mirror and console, how to mattify gloss paint.

DISCLOSURE – while this post is not sponsored, I did receive this paint free of charge from Fusion Mineral Paint in exchange for a blog post. I only work with brands that I like and of course, think you will too. Thank you for supporting the companies that support The Interior DIYer.

Architecture

Lower Town Dollhouse’s … Dollhouse

The niche-ness of this blog post is almost too much. Also, I will shortly be changing the name of my blog to The Interior Dollhouse-er because I have a newfound tiny obsession that you may or may not have noticed.

Last weekend there were two special weather advisory’s here in Ottawa; one was for frigid temperatures [-35°C and below] and the other was a snow storm warning so we spent the entire weekend indoors. Did I do anything productive? No. Did I Marie-Kondo our kitchen? Or paint the hallway? Or make batches of dinners for the week ahead? No. I made a miniature dollhouse for Cora’s Lower Town Dollhouse.

So this week I thought I’d share how to make a miniature dollhouse, or, a dollhouse’s dollhouse. Because I just know there are thousands of people out there feverishly Googling this very niche subject right now and I must ensure I reach them through most excellent Search Engine Optimization.

It was actually fairly straight forward making the body of the miniature dollhouse. For the facade, [try to keep a straight face while I use the term ‘facade’ to describe something 8cm tall], I sketched a rough outline of the windows and cut them with an exacto knife [as seen above]. I did the same with a second piece of cardboard [but a lot less accurately] as I was going to sandwich a piece of plastic between the two to securely create plastic windows that wouldn’t budge thanks to tiny toddler hands [you can see the roughly cut inner piece three photos down in the interior of the dollhouse].

For the rest of the body of the dollhouse, I used cardboard, masking tape and Gorilla Super Glue to create the other three sides [Super Glue because toddler].

Then I tackled the tiny angled roof. I used wooden tongue depressors [you could easily just use cardboard] that I cut at an angle to mimic the angle of the larger dollhouse’s roof [below]. My next worry was how I was going to securely attach the roof to the dollhouse. It needed to be toddler-proof. So I Super-Glued what I’m going to call ‘brackets’ [I don’t know if that’s the right term?] using wooden coffee stirrers to the inside of the roof pieces [as seen above]. This way the roof ‘brackets’ would be able to rest on the top of the body of the miniature dollhouse. And by ‘rest’ I mean be glued to using vast amounts of Super Glue.

The above picture might help to make a bit more sense of my description. I added more brackets to the top of the inside of the roof to once again give the flat part of the roof something to sit on and adhere to. I painted the outside in a few coats of paint and even cut out tiny cardboard shutters which I Super-Glued into place.

“This seems like a lot of detail for something so small and unimportant and is in no way contributing to current day society“, I hear you say. Yes, you could very well be right, but there really isn’t anything better than seeing Cora’s little face light up the moment she realized I was making a tiny version of her dollhouse. “OHHHHHHH! BABY DOLLHOUSE!”, she squealed. I could have better spent my time doing literally anything else all weekend, but that would have been far too productive.