So Hard to do the Right Thing

UPDATE: MY LOGICAL LAZINESS HAS BEEN COMPROMISED

It was settled. We would paint the entire top floor of our new split-level and leave the downstairs unfinished. The logical was: "We'll wait to paint until we know what to do with it" The lazy was: "I don't want to paint the whole house yet!" But now I know we must...because it's the right thing to do. why?

Floors.

Last night I went over flooring options with Erna, my soon-to-be sister-in-law and current carpet diva. The plan is to install stratamax over the current icky kitchen vinyl:


and over the color-confused main bath:


Now, I knew when we first saw our house, before it was our house, that the downstairs flooring would need to be redone in order for it to ever become our home. The floor was a shoddy combo of commercial grade, stained office carpet and ancient blue-green vinyl sticky tile (which I'm not against...but these where ugly and everywhere...see


So now I have a new logical, which I'm not happy about: Paint the whole darn thing. Because I know for a FACT how awful I am at keeping paint off the floor. I'm good at painting, but I do it with an air of perpetual poutyness. I hate second coats. I hate taping and cutting in and all that boring stuff. Poor me right? (there's sarcasm there-I'm infinitely blessed to have a home to call my own that I love so dearly. But I can still bitch about it) So it's settled. The whole downstairs gets it, pre-carpet install. But it doesn't stop there.

For about 100 bucks more we can rip out the matching commercial grade berber that currently resides in the soon-to-be guest bedroom. Ok, lets do it, it's yucky for sure! But that means that room must now be painted first (it's current hue is primer-over-teal). Ok. But what about the last room. The Lilac Room:

Her walls are purple, her carpet is emerald and her curtains are stuffed with tissue paper...

She would be a pretty pastel purple pimple on our otherwise smooth and beachy color palate. So she'll get it sooner than expected too.

Bah Humbug! I'm off to conjure up some volunteers...

who needs rules anyway!?

Well, I this is my first 2010 post and I have to say, its not too exciting. It's difficult to work full-time, party on NYE, buy and paint a house and still find time to write about it...especially when no one's really listening at the moment ;)

Plus my technological handicap is starting to show. I admit it. I am maybe the worlds only college grad who has problems uploading photos from her camera. Forgive me?

With the help of my Mom and our wonderful friend KT, Spencer and I accomplished A LOT yesterday. It went pretty well, except for a dead hammer and a sadly patched hallway hole (we're working on it!) Here is what we managed to get done in just one day...

-We painted! Coats went up on the bedroom, the living and dining rooms, the hallway and the kitchen.
-We removed the *gorgeous golden bath doors* and cleaned up the mess
-Spencer's Dad removed some random hall light fixture and we patched up the hole it left (ruining our new paint job in the process)
-We removed the fancy wooden coral swing doors that separated the hall from the rest of the house (this is where we lost our hammer head)

Removing the light and the doors from the hallway really updated the look of the space almost instantly! We had been on the fence about removing the doors just yet (they are tacky, but so funny!) Without them, the hall feels open and extra-large.

We had a tough time picking paint. One half of our brains said "go for it! get crazy and splash up some wild color on the wall!" while the other half reminded us to keep cool and neutral-and let the things we bring into the space make it interesting. Although it felt boring to repeat 2 sort of blah colors on most of the walls we were going for a cohesive look. We picked Valspar's "Swoosh" for the living room, hallway and half of our bedroom. "Whirlwind" went up in the kitchen, dining room and eventually the foyer (tall walls yikes!). We reused the old blue we had left from our current bedroom to paint 2 accent walls in our new bedroom. Score! It cost us ZERO dollars and we already know we like it!

I'll get into these projects more when I can post pictures.Valspar brand paint was a little pricey, but great because it includes a primer in the paint and cuts down on coats...plus we scored 2 gallons at the "oops!" paint price of $6! "Swoosh" is a sort of coffee and cream color (can't you tell that from the name?) and "Whirlwind" is a lovely warm lacy white. What a difference the right white makes! I forget the name of our room blue, but It's made by Behr and it reminds me of a stormy ocean blue...

We have loads to do today. Spencer, Erna and PattyMayo our on the case today while I'm at work. I left them a nice long list of projects to complete so they would stay on track. I'll return to help them after, when we'll discuss flooring options and paint for the bathroom and other bedrooms. I said I would wait to paint the spares until a later date, but that lavender just isn't working with our new low key color scheme...so who knows!