{ Paint }

"Feather Your Nest."

Doesn't that sound delightful? It's what I've been alternately doing, longing to do, and being insanely frustrated by my lack-of-talent-for-doing. We only have a little nest, and the fact that it's ours {we closed on this condo eight days before the wedding} is itself God's grace to us. At the same time that I'm tickled pink to have free reign over the look and feel of our home, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices, in everything from "decorating style" {huh?} to the 9,683 different shades of yellow paint available for purchase. I've loved pretty homes since I was small, but I've never been one to pore over home decorating magazines and blogs, dreaming of my future home. I most certainly did not enter home ownership with a clear idea of what I want my home to look like. In many ways, that has been a blessing: you can't disappoint expectations if you haven't any! Perhaps that's why sifting through possible paint colors was an overwhelming task.

I set a deadline for myself: Memorial Day. We are going to paint our condo over Memorial Day weekend, I said to myself. Which meant: hurry up and choose paint colors! Piles of paint chips. Mounds of paint chips. Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa stacks of paint chips everywhere. Which shade of grey??? There are on 1,285 to choose from--at Benjamin Moore. If I include the paint chips from Lowe's, we're up to 2.64 million. And that's only for the bathroom!!! What about the living room? The dining room, which is continuous with the living room? The hall, which comes off the living room? And WHAT ABOUT THE KITCHEN?! Thank goodness I wasn't even interested in painting the second bedroom/office.

Memorial Day is a nice, three-day weekend, so we set out on Saturday morning with the blithe, innocent joy of Those Who Have Never Painted Before. Naivete, some would call it. Happy because we have no frickin' idea how arduous is the task before us, I call it now. But I digress.

Taping. A seemingly-innocent two-syllable word that I now detest.

Dear Mike. Two words, one syllable each, that I mentally caress with all the emotional gusto I possess.






That dear man not only taped, but painted, all the hard parts: The tops of the walls. The edges between wall and ceiling. That one dining room wall, in all its horrific twenty-plus-feet of height. The weird nook-y area above the kitchen ceiling-y part. See why I make up words by adding "-y" to the end? How else would you describe this above-the-ceiling-shelf-y area?

I'm so dramatic sometimes! In reality, our weekend of painting wasn't really that bad. It was physically exhausting, yes: Every single step of the process took much longer than we expected. We spent so.much.time. taping. We had to go back to Lowe's for additional paint multiple times--the poor-quality contractor paint already on our walls just soaked up the paint we applied, and we ended up using almost double the amount of paint we originally purchased.

Around 1:00 a.m. on Sunday night {Monday morning at this point}, we had completely painted the bathroom (two coats on ceiling + walls), had one coat on the bedroom ceiling, and were finishing up the first coat on the living and dining rooms. Though I had Memorial Day off, Mike needed to work, so after a few hours of sleeping like the dead, we rolled out of bed--Husband to work, Wife to paint the bedroom walls. Did I mention I had a killer sore throat and felt like death and had to go to Lowe's AGAIN to buy more paint?!

is, this project was harder and more time-consuming than we expected, but we did it {all! in three days!!}. More than a month later, furniture is finally rearranged, belongings back in their proper places, paint smell mostly gone. What do you think?

{ Living room - before }

{ Entry - before }

{ Dining room - before }

{ Living room - after }

{ Living room - after }

{ Entry - after }

{ Dining room - after }

I was not at all sure about this green when we finished. It seemed like miles and miles of bright, chirpy Easter green--but once we moved the furniture back into place, I liked it much better. It's still a bit overwhelming at times; I'm eager to hang art on the walls and see if that softens it a bit. I was going for a color that is bright and airy, and this certainly fits the bill!

{ Bathroom - before }

{ Bathroom - after }

{Bathroom - after - complete with prints waiting to be hung }

I was sincerely attempting a gray grey for the bathroom walls--not a blue grey. As you can see, I was entirely unsuccessful, but we both really like this color anyway.

{ Bedroom - before }

{ Bedroom - before }

{ Bedroom - after }

{ Bedroom - after }

{ Bedroom - after }

Our bedroom is my favorite. :-) The walls are a rusty, orange-ish sienna, and the ceiling is just slightly more red than the walls. Lovely. Our Ikea lamps and the duvet cover {the only one of hundreds that we both liked} help round out the Moroccan feel. Don't worry about the white bedside table, I'm going to paint it some color soon!

Now, what colors should we paint the kitchen and hallway? ;-)