Ten years ago, I fell in love with this house. We looked at it, came back for an open house on Martin Luther King day, and decided to make an offer. The listing agent wanted a letter from our bank stating we were pre-approved, and because it was MLK day, and the bank was closed, we had to wait a day. Meanwhile, someone else put an offer in. We were devastated. Absolutely and completely bummed out. We put in a back-up contract, and continued our search, but I kept hoping that somehow this would be our house. The layout and space were everything I ever wanted. Luckily for us, the contract on it fell through, and we lucked into owning our dream home. One thing about it though, we knew it was a bit of a fixer-upper. We have been tackling projects one at a time, sometimes having to put the things we wanted to do on the back burner while we fixed things that had to be fixed, but living our best lives here, and continuing to put things on the lengthy list.
The day we first looked at this house, I remember telling Jim we would be needing to do a whole lot of painting. The main bathroom was an ungodly shade of purple, and the master bedroom was some sort of hideous blue mess. The basement was camo! The kids bedrooms were all wacky splatter paint, mustard yellow, and the list went on and on. We have done a lot. I have happily covered a multitude of someone else’s taste. Last year, we painted the living room, tackling the nightmare of the vaulted ceilings. It wasn’t fun. I severely hurt my shoulder in the process, and my desire to do our bedroom, even though I despised the paint job in there, was severely deflated. Until a few weeks ago when Jim and I were discussing Christmas. I told Jim all I wanted was a master bedroom re-do. He was happy to indulge, I think he hated the blue as much as I did.
I had some ideas, but I will freely admit that sometimes my decorating skills are limited. I love color. Bright, bold but still somewhat neutral colors. I sometimes just go with my ideas knowing that if I hate it, I can always repaint it later. The problem with this project was that it is big, and the vaulted ceilings require a lot of work, so I don’t want to repaint for a very long time. Maybe never. I needed advice. I enlisted the one person on this earth who isn’t afraid to tell me my ideas are bad, and I will actually listen. (Sorry Jim). Grace and I went shopping. I had some ideas what I wanted. She thought my ideas might be a little too dark. She pulled some apps up on her phone. I followed her lighter gray advice. I ventured a little out of her comfort zone In the yellow department, but I love sunshine and wanted something that felt sunny. Grace drug me to the re-store where I found a chair I liked, and painted it yellow. I wanted a new ceiling fan (I hate brass). Grace talked me into spray painting the one we had black. It cost me $1.99, and I absolutely love how it looks! She is literally filled with good ideas.
Madison and Andrew’s heat went out. Madison came over with the girls today. She cooked lunch and dinner. She made cookies. She cleaned the kitchen. I am sorry about their furnace but I am thankful for her help! Mallory loves painting. She got all excited and jumped right in to help me. Cameron agreed to doing the ladder parts and did an amazing job on the high window that I wanted painted yellow. He had to clean it and prime it. He spent a long time 15 feet in the air, and I sincerely appreciated it. Preston dropped the ceiling fan for me, and re-installed it when I got it painted. Their help was amazing. Harper and Saige helped around the house, took care of the animals, and helped with Evie. Jim and Andrew went fishing. They caught a lot of trout. Today was amazing!
I am still working on painting our bedside tables. I got new bedding but have t washed it yet. I have a little more sorting to do on our dressers, and I need to touch up the master bathroom which we also painted today, Overall, the hard stuff is done and I absolutely love how it turned out! I’m so thankful for my family.
One funny story - about once an hour we would have a little knock on the door. Evelyn would ask for an update. She would walk in, put her hands on her hip and say “I still see blue- you aren’t done!” Thanks kid - we appreciate your updates.
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