Painting

Painting is rough work. A lot more time, money and energy than I had expected. But -- the results are worth it in the end. My mom came down for a 3 rooms in 3 days type of effort (including ceilings). Day 1 was the ceilings, which was honestly the most tiring thing I had ever done - even with my husband and I trading off on it. The trim wasn't too bad, but the rolling was pretty tiring... I think the results look pretty good though.

A picture of our protected ceiling fan.

Day 2 was painting. My mom and I worked on the trim while my husband went to get supplies from home depot. Then, he went to work on rolling. Turns out that priming would have been a good idea. We had thought that maybe the owners had painted the whole house beige to sell it. We were mistaken. The paint went right into the walls. Oops. So, all in all- it took 3 gallons and three coats to cover the beige. Oops. Now, it is really hard to show the gray-blue color that we ended up with in the master bedroom, but here is my best shot at it.

We also tackled the guest bedroom, but only got three walls painted. The plan was three walls in a light (almost white) lavender and one in a deeper lavender with white bedding. I think it will look really pretty when completed. We ended up working pretty late and getting all the light purple on the walls along with the trim, which was actually pretty difficult the way our windows work in the guest bedroom.

Day 3, we finished up the guest bedroom's accent wall and covered some of the light purple that we didn't get quite right the night before. Overall, the results looked really quite beautiful, and I am quite happy with the results:

We also added one more coat of paint to the master bedroom, which made the final color really look great. Now that I have recovered from the exhausting act of actually painting, I am excited about eventually painting more rooms in the house, especially the kitchen, which could use some lightening up as it gets quite a bit of shade from our tree outside. After some teaching from my mom, I feel much more confident about the technique and tools to use. :) And no better time than when you are about to replace the carpets!