Painting is done!

If you ever want to find out who your TRUE friends are, just mention that you're painting soon. ;) We were SO happy to have my friend Hilary and my sister Becky volunteer to help us. I helped Hilary paint her house a while back, so she "owed" me. Now that we're even, I better hurry and think of something else to do to get her in my debt so she doesn't think she can ditch me ... ;)

Anyway, I am happy to say that our painting actually went smoother than I anticipated. I love that! I've been slow about posting pics, because they look very pixelated when I downsize them. (The walls look like pretty pixelated circles.) Also, the camera did NOT want to take pictures of plain walls! But I think I finally got 'em ...

They are nothing exciting on here, but in person they're awesome ... at least to me. :) Like I mentioned, this was my first time to paint my own house, and I happen to think it turned out awesome!

Okay, now for the before and after pics. Our bedroom was a dusty green color. I didn't mind the color at all -- just that it was on EVERY wall and the ceiling where it wasn't supposed to be. Did I mention that it was a bad paint job everywhere? I'm sure I may forget and mention it again ...

Anyway, you can see in this pic how they used different finishes to do touch-ups. Although it's the right color, they used a flat color instead of an enamel -- and did the same throughout the house. This means there are "touch-ups" that show on EVERY wall. Sigh. We also discovered that the reason there is so much paint on the ceiling and baseboards is because they used masking tape, not painter's tape. We found left-behind pieces during our job. Why waste the money and effort if you're not going to do it right? Anyway, there was green all over the ceiling, so after we taped off properly we then had to go back with white and paint over the green on the ceiling. I didn't get any pictures of that before, so just appreciate the lack of green in the after!

A quick note about the before pic: We came home V-day night and the kids had decorated our room with hearts. What cuties! Oh, and if you look at our door it was decorated -- or depending on who you ask, covered in laser beams ... Tyler was so excited about it he wanted to jump in the picture. Don't ask me why! Anyway, focus on the higher part of the wall for the paint job. I mean, look at that between the orange and yellow heart! (Ignore the messy closet I just now noticed. :)

MASTER BEFORE:


MASTER AFTER:



Yup, that's right. Although the cocoa is a nice, warm color, it is used on only ONE wall -- an accent wall. What an idea ...

That's what we did in all the rooms except the office, which bugged me the most of any paint job. Our camera kept trying to even out the colors, so I had to take one without a flash, thus the yellow look. But can you see those lines? I just stared at them every day when I was on the computer ...

OFFICE BEFORE:


OFFICE AFTER:


Notice how you don't notice the paint? I LOVE that! We did a nice color (Gobi Desert) and just have the whole office two-tone. We didn't like the unintentional 3-tone affect they had in here. Speaking of that, look at the bathroom ...

BATHROOM BEFORE: (How'd they even do that?)


BATHROOM AFTER:


Yes, again only an accent wall. Oh, and notice the cute shower curtain -- I finally splurged and got a real one instead of just the dollar store ones.

And another unintentional 3-tone when they used the bathroom paint to do a few touch-ups before moving out ...

SHAYLA'S BEDROOM BEFORE: (The stars were placed over the worst spots!)


SHAYLA's BEDROOM DURING: (Can you guess what color we were painting?)


Unfortunately she still has paint in her hair. And that was such a cute shirt. :(

SHAYLA'S ROOM AFTER:


I can't tell you what scare we got with the green in Shayla's room. I had Rebecca and Hilary start painting in there, and when I walked in when they were half-way through I almost died -- it looked like a brownish gray HORRIBLE color! I asked if they had the right one. They said it did look more green in the can, but definitely not green. My sister later confessed that she almost stopped painting it was so ugly. Anyway, it dried just fine! Phew. I guess that's why we pay Behr -- I guess they DO know what they're doing!

I liked the green so much I decided to go ahead and do an unplanned accent wall in our master bath. No before pics, but it was just another bad paint job. (No worries, the green rings are going soon ...)

We also re-painted the living room with the nice Gobi Desert color since we love the two-tone with white. And aren't those the cutest kiddos you've seen? :)


So now all that's left is putting the house back together. It was sure tricky to paint the entire upstairs AND the living room. We relocated most of the upstairs stuff to the living room, and then had to move everything to the one side we weren't painting. Although the kids loved the "maze" we created to get through, I found the best part to be our sleeping little one right in the middle of it all:


She loved sleeping there and even shhhh'd us in the next room when she was trying to get to sleep. What a cutie.

Thank you for your help, Hilary and Rebekina!