Home sweet home and not-so-sweet home improvements

When I first saw Matt’s townhouse (now our townhouse) it was clearly “boy.” Not just “boy” but “boy in grad school with no time or money to invest in beautifying a home.” (Sorry for outing you Matt, but you’ll admit it is true!)

Since it is now our home, we are trying to make it feel more home-like. In August we started with slipcovers, curtains and throw pillows….8 throw pillows later, the living room looks more put together.

Next step: brighten the place with paint. Everyone knows painting is a chore. And we knew that going in, but it’s so much more of a chore than we ever expected. As this morning, nearly all the house is painted. (WOOHOO!) If you look at Matt’s earlier blog you can see his remarks on painting. Last weekend we painted the hallway and stairwell with a light, creamy yellow. Check out the great lengths we had to go to get the entire wall!

While using the long poll, Matt was pushing with great vigor to fill in the heavily textured walls (read: walls that are painstakingly hard to paint and driving us absolutely nuts). Suddenly there was a *crash*. The roller broke in half and went flying down the stairs! Thankfully we took little care in keeping paint off the carpets since we will be replacing them anyway. But we had to go to Ace Hardware and buy a new roller. There we discovered that are different roller pads for different levels of texture. AHA!! Brilliant! So we bought several for medium-textured walls and it actually makes a difference. Hopefully it will make painting the entire downstairs a little less painful. And make a little mental note for yourself in case you ever find yourself painting annoyingly textured walls!

It’s all worth it in the end though! I can’t wait to post all the finished products! And for kicks, Matt and I started getting goofy with all our painting...with the amount of time we've been doing it, we had to mix it up somehow. Pictures to prove it:














I had fun labeling Matt with painting tape. And you have to love my AWESOME tied died, eighties-hippy style painting outfit.