Painting the ugly cupboards

Our house is a festival of 1970s exposed brick walls and timber finishes. Timber ceiling, skirtings, door frames and window sills. We could paint it all - but actually we quite like it, and it's typical of the time the house was built, and once you paint it it's an enormous amount of work to strip it back if you change your mind. Having said that, we have decided that the ugly wood veneer cupboards in the family room are just one step too far, and we're painting them. When we first moved in and the boys were little we used the family room all the time - just off the kitchen, tiles on the floor, good for mess and quarantining those mountains of plastic toddler toys. In fact when I was looking for photos of the cupboards for the "before" shot I had to go right back in time to find anything at all.

Isn't he cute? That's number two son, and some vividly blue play dough. Little did we know he was going to use these skills for vividly blue fondant icing and meringues. Those are the cupboards at the back left - the shelf has a plastic aircraft carrier, a potty, an analog TV and a stuffed brontosaurus. The toddler years, how I really don't miss you.

And here's number one son and some creation we thought was evidence of his creative or engineering genius. The shelves go all the way to the roof, it's hard to tell from this photo. And they don't look as ugly in the photos as they do in reality, trust me, it's hideous. What we really need to do is knock some walls out (there's a weird little area at the end of the hallway, with a window, where the computer desk is) but that would require my two least favourite things of Spending Money and Making Effort so for now we just paint.

Here is the halfway shot - two undercoats of primer and sealer. It's quite time consuming because of all the little bits here and there, even when you're doing a pretty crap job as I am, with the help of the boys, who are enthusiastic but not expert. On the right wall you can see a paint chart as we agonise between four hundred shades of almost identical near-white. We've gone with White Polar, which should give you an idea of the shade. I will post an after shot in six months or so when we've finished.

I did think of doing some more today but it's bucketing down rain which makes it all much more awkward because you can't do the doors outside, and washing out the brushes is miserable, and it takes much longer to dry. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them! It's also the reason I'm sitting here at  11 am still in my lycra without actually having been out for a run. It's cold and wet out there...