One thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads ...

Now I know why nothing ever gets done in my house.  Because nothing is ever as simple as you think it's going to be.

Shortly after we moved in we replaced one of the kitchen lights with a ceiling fan.  As you can see from this photo, the original light fixture was much wider than the fan.

We never got around to painting the ceiling.   Have I mentioned that we moved in nearly nine years ago?  Well, see There's a funny story behind this project for my excuse rationale for how that can happen. 

Anyway, a few months ago, our other light in the kitchen, a large florescent light, broke.  We had our friend who is an electrician come in, remove that light and replace it with recessed lighting.  We love the lights but the process left this behind:

So I could no longer ignore the kitchen ceiling.  Time to paint.

Ever the optimist, I first tried just painting white paint over the areas in question.  I know, I know - nice try.  The original paint wasn't pure white and it must've been a satin finish where I was using matte.  No dice.  I had to paint the entire ceiling.

Unfortunately, when I went up above the cabinets to tape off the walls I saw the dust and grime that had collected on the decorative stuff I have up there.  Yuck.  I couldn't just ignore it.  And so one simple project became another.  I took everything down, washed all of the things that could be washed, dusted off those that could be dusted and cleaned the top of the cabinets.  When was the last time this was done?  I'm embarrassed to say that I can't remember.  Do people do this on a regular basis?  I think the last time I was up there was when I painted the kitchen walls.  I was six months pregnant with Rachel at the time.  I think I've mentioned that she's almost six now.  *sigh*

OK, with that project finished, I got back to the task at hand and started painting.

In the process of painting I had to move the refrigerator - and needed to vacuum underneath it.  And the ceiling fan needed to be dusted.   When moving the kitchen table I noticed how dirty the walls were in the corner where Rachel sits.  So I wiped down the walls too.

Yes, the ceiling did eventually get painted.  But the whole project took a lot longer than I expected.  It looks fantastic now, though.  And there's something really great about knowing that the air in the kitchen is probably a lot less toxic since the tops of my cabinets are clean.

There were a few other things that I noticed while painting - the top of the refrigerator needs a good cleaning, the kitchen counter tops need some serious organizing, as do the two "junk drawers" that I think everyone has in their kitchen.

But those are projects for another day.