Most of our apartment’s style has many navys, reds, browns, tans, and wood tones. I love having our space decorated in a way that makes David feel at home and comfortable, and that means curtailing some of my ultra-girly design tastes. (Don’t get me wrong, I also feel 100% at home here. I don’t like when wives go overly girly with decor for their home.) Keeping with all that, I wanted to try something a bit glam in the kitchen. I love when a room has one thing that is kind of unexpected from the vibe of everything else.
Rental kitchens can be really tough to work with.
You can’t paint cabinets, replace appliances, or re-tile anything, which basically leaves it stuck as-is. Which is why this idea to change our fridge in a completely cheap and removable way was perfect for our needs. You know I’m excited about something if I instagram it before I’ve even written a post.
What is that? You might be asking. Duct tape! So perfectly cheap & removable, but it makes a big, fun impact. Especially in our casual and playful first apartment vibe.
Duct tape has really raised its game the past few years. I’ve seen a zillion new patterns and colors, but never thought it’d be much use to anyone other than a seventh grader decorating their english notebook. Wrong^10!
I cleaned off all our various magnets & memorabilia. (Jury’s out on if I want to return any of the stuff back to the fridge, or just let the gold shine through in all its glory.) Then, I gave the big thing a huge scrub and wipe down. I kind of love excuses to do deep cleaning on the stuff we don’t wash routinely.
Now, the fun part: putting on the tape. I was intimidated this would require a lot of meticulous measurements. I did do some occasional pencil marks to keep things straight, but you’d I think do okay to eye-ball everything. The whole fridge by myself took about one and a half hours. (I’m estimating this based on that I got through 3/4 of The King’s Speech on Netflix.) I used almost exactly 2 rolls of gold duct tape.
David says he likes it, so chalk it up as a victory. Let this be an inspiration to renters or old fridge owners everywhere! You can do it! There’s hope! Many have asked if the tape will leave a residue on the fridge when removed. Below I wrote a final report from when we moved out.
UPDATE FROM MOVING OUT
Whenever any friends who also follow the blog came over to the apartment there was always one thing they most wanted to see – the gold fridge. No doubt, it is quite a statement piece.
What was the number one question about it? Far and away: do you think it will leave a residue when you take it off?
My hunch was no. I had tested small corners to see if anything was forming and it always removed smoothly with nothing left behind. Even if there was, it would not be anything goo gone could not fix.
Well, here is what happened: it all came off! It took David about 10 minutes to remove and there was no residue.
We gave it a good wipe down when we left and it was back to being a normal, cheap fridge in a rental.