It's nothing a fresh coat of paint won't hide.

When I bought my house three years ago every wall was beige. It was one of the things that sealed the deal for me. That and the pool. I had been looking for about three months when we found this place and I had seen some really scary houses. We (my parents and I - they were helping me) would only consider foreclosed homes and lucky us, the market was full of them. 

I was so happy to find a house that was in almost perfect shape: no missing walls or broken windows, the previous owners even left behind their washer and dryer while not new worked well for a couple of years. I was ecstatic that everything was so uniform in color. It meant I could take my time in deciding what I was going to do. Also beige pretty much goes with everything. 

It took a while to get the keys to my house so I had moved in wiht my parents when my lease ended and was able to paint the common areas while they were empty. 

I started in the kitchen:

Pardon the during photo, I'm terrible about getting befores and afters.

 The cabinets were a dull medium colored wood and the counter tops were black marble tile. Black and brown? Eww. First order of business: cover the nasty brown wood with a nice bright white. It was a monster pain in the ass. First I had to meticulously wipe everything down with TSP, then wipe away the TSP, prime inside and out and then paint. It took several coats to get the finish just right.

Once the cabinets were done it was onto the walls and chair rail. My first impulse had been bright green:

Thank goodness for those little sample bottles at Lowe's. My dad calls this color "What you see in the toilet bowl after a night of hard drinking. So yeah, I didn't go with green.

 Then I thought, how about a Tiffany's blue? Neither of the above were right, but I persevered and finally found the right shade. Not bad right? Also the blue is echoed in the color of the pool when you look out at it from those windows.

 

Then I moved onto the living room. I had been wanting a peacock blue and again it took forever to find the right shade. These days I see my colors everywhere... of course. Here's a handy tip: don't think you will be saving time by using one roller for two different paints. Especially when the second color is a lot darker than the first this is the result:

 It took an entire gallon of paint to do that one wall. I still find spots that could use some touching up every time I look at the wall.

It took my two years to finally get to my bedroom. I had planned on painting one wall black and the rest white. I was going to use hot pink as my accent color and planned to use it liberally in all sorts of silly knock-knacks. Luckily, I came to my senses and went with a more mature black/gray/green scheme. I think it turned out wonderfully. 

My mom made the headboard (ignore the clashing sheets please).

My mom also made these memo boards that I use to pin my jewelry to. 

The absloute latest paint project was this buffet.

It started out a deep periwinkle but my talented (and retired) mom used the same color paint from the kitchen cabinets to transform it so I could have some extra storage in the kitchen & dining room.


Now that summer is (kinda) here the projects will be put on hold as it gets a mite bit hot in the garage and there is no way I'm spray painting in the house. But I did just score a beautiful mirrored dresser that is begging to be painted black and white.


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Thanks to Brad for inspiring this post as part of the Indie Ink Writing Challenge.

Busy doing other things

I adore my homemade planner. I made it out of a plan black notebook, inserted/okie-rigged tabs to reflect what was important to me and viola! Thanks to my mom having a super cool Cricut machine I was even able to decorate with an adorable owl.

Moving on. Why am I bringing this all up? The time change has really gotten me screwed up this time around. Not only can't I fall asleep at night, but waking up what feels like and hour earlier than I am used too has made me kind of a walking zombie this week. As I will show you in the next few pictures you will see why that is a bad thing.

This is what my January looked like. If I still carried last year's notebook I would show you my December and the myriad of colors and appointments would astound you. January turned into a pretty light month.

 Then there was February. Holy crap, when did I have time to breathe? Did I mention that my calendar is purely extracurricular? On top of the 40-ish hours I spend at work every week I did all of the things you see below. This is what I show my dad (also my landlord) when he comes by the house and notices that the grass in the back hasn't been cut in about 6 (maybe more) months.

 I have high hopes for March. The latter half anyway. After going-going-going like a crazy person and getting a new (and absolutely wonderful) roommate I had decided to take the month off from almost everything. But slowly things crept back on the schedule. How could I say no to the casserole swap last week? Or playing XBox Kinect with Dina and her 5-year-old tonight? So what if the sun is currently shining and the weather is foretasted to rain the next nine days. The grass has gone this long with out mowing. It can go another week or 4. Right?

 April is pretty open... for now.

Maybe then I'll have time to clean out my overflowing bedroom closet, plant my seedlings or get the junk out of my office so I can actually use it?