PAINT!!

SO...painting took over our lives the first few weeks we were here. Jeremy leaves for work about 6:15 or 6:30, gets home at 6, we eat, play with the kids, put them to bed around 8, and then the hours of 8-11pm were devoted to painting pretty much everyday. We were so exhausted, but our eagerness to be done kept us going. Finally on Thursday, we finished! Yippee!!

We painted the two-story entry, office, kitchen, family room, breakfast room (kitchen table area), hallways, downstairs half bath, Anna's room, Master bedroom & bathroom, and the laundry room. Everything needed two coats also so we did all of that twice! It was exhausting to say the least! But it looks great. Eventually we want to do the formal living and dining rooms but since the only thing we have between those two rooms right now is a piano, it will wait until we furnish them (which probable won't be for at least a year).

For the most part, I did the edges and "cutting in" and Jeremy did the rolling. We made a pretty good team. Occasionally I did some rolling while he was at work, and he did the edges of death on our two-story entry, but otherwise we stuck with what we were good at. Here are a few pictures of our fun times!

The office with the edges done. I have to say also that Jeremy was amazingly thorough at patching the walls. There were TONS of holes in the walls from screws and what not, and Jeremy did a wonderful job patching and sanding. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but it was totally worth it because the walls look smooth and beautiful now!

Another Office during pic:

Office Before (listing photo):

And after:

 This is the listing photo of the kitchen/breakfast room. Of course it looks great in these professional pictures, but honestly the paint job was not very good. You could see a bunch of roller marks and patch marks and as I said, lots of holes, and we really didn't care for the "harvest" colors, so we re-did everything.

Here's what it looks like now! We chose a "softer tan" it was called for the main rooms, entry, hallways, etc. and a darker "greige" I guess (warm taupey gray) for the office, breakfast room, and half bath. I know everyone has different tastes, but we LOVE the way the colors turned out.

 Breakfast Room before - it said "Life is Beautiful. God is in the Details". I felt like a total heathen painting over that, but it had to go.

Breakfast Room after. I made a bulletin board thing on the far side for the kids' artwork. I actually went to a fabric store and bought fabric for the first time in my life (are you proud of me, Debbie?). Of course I didn't actually have to sew anything, but I was still pleased. It adds some fun color to the room and is a nice spot for the kids to color and display their stuff.

Another Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After. And YES I LOVE MY KITCHEN!!!! It is a dream.

Master Bedroom Before:

And in an effort to keep things real, here is our bedroom on laundry day! Sheets are being washed and piles of (clean and folded!) clothes in hampers on the bed. But look at the nice paint! Haha. Obviously this room needs some work in the decorating department...someday...

Master Bath Before. This dark orange was even darker in real life. Yikes.

And After. It's a light blue with a hint of green. Very soothing. :)

Family Room Before:

And sort of after. We put our old couches in our basement and we are getting a big dark brown sectional that should be here in the next couple weeks (which is also why I wanted light walls). We are really looking forward to having somewhere soft to sit! I'll need to hang some things on these walls sometime too!

 Family Room During. The first thing I did after we closed on the house was take all the curtains down. These windows are glorious and I wanted to really see them!Half Bath. Man, bathrooms are a pain in the neck to paint.

Entry During Pictures:

I didn't get any pictures of Jeremy doing the edges because the ladder was extended up against the wall and I was holding onto the bottom of it to make sure it didn't slip. That was a tough night.

Lots of holes to fill on those walls!

And after!

Luckily the basement looks fine and the boys' room was already painted a really nice blue-gray and looked way nicer than the other rooms, so we didn't have to do that!

Anyway that's our fun painting adventure! It's funny because when we bought our first house in Utah (8 years ago!) we painted the whole house, and so we thought, "oh yeah, we can paint this whole house". Well, we forgot about the whole size difference, two coats instead of one, and the fact that we have three kids now, so it was a lot more work than we planned on, but I love how paint is an economical way to transform your home and make it feel like new! It was definitely worth it for us.