Our First Reveal!!

Yes, I know...it's been a while. But we're finally ready for our first big reveal!! Since our last post, we made some decisions about the color for our first room (the 2nd bedroom) and had one solid weekend of getting a couple coats of primer on the walls. Then...well...we did this:

Here you'll see Jeff's mom standing second from the right with her brothers and sisters...who all had kids...who had more kids...who all got together at a fun little campground in Illinois for a weekend. Holy cow, I met a LOT of new people that weekend! Then we did this:

That tiny little guy dressed in white is our beautiful godson, Anthony. We were so excited to be in St. Louis last weekend for his baptism. Such a sweet little guy, and a wonderful family, too.

SO. Painting has taken a little longer than we initially thought it would, but we're blaming it on our short little spurts of "enough time for one coat on two walls" evenings. (And I'm happy to deny that it has anything to do with our less-than-pro comfort level with Green Frog Tape or having 17 different kinds of paint brushes that we MUST try out). Right before the last post, the room looked like this.

It's actually a pretty nice green color, but this room is one of the brightest rooms in the house. We decided to celebrate that and go even brighter. I'll be honest here - I was a bit unsure of our color choice for a little while. When we first opened the paint can, I thought to myself..."Wow. Creamsicle. What have we DONE?!?!" But Jeff's encouragement to relax, get it on the wall, and re-evaluate later was great. I'm loving it now, and I think it's going to be even better with furniture in the room and the right decor. So....with no further ado...

 
 "Beth, do we really only get to see this corner of the room?" you say. Ok, fine, here's the rest:

Yes, I absolutely refuse to move all of our supplies just for a good shot of the other half of the room.

There's still more to do - we need to figure out a few of the details, but we're on our way. This weekend's projects include fixing up the very neglected closet in that room (seen here after I did some scraping and steel wool sanding of all the flaking paint)...

...and breaking ground in the bathroom.

Yes, this is the ceiling after a not-so-hot paint job (from before Jeff bought the house) started falling off in chunks. (We're HOPING that's the real reason...and not some scary water damage under there!) I see a crick in my neck and some amazingly strong biceps in my near future...

Five Trips in Five Days

Five trips in five days...to big box home improvement stores, that is. Jeff and I decided that we really need to just DIG IN to our project, and it seemed like deciding on some general color schemes for the rooms that don't need much other work was a good first step. It was much easier than either of us imagined to agree on some general colors...but then finding the paint that matched our vision was the hardest part! The Villa is in a nice, shady spot, which means color chips that might look beautiful under the lovely fluorescent Home Depot lights arrive at home and look...well...gray. All of them. So we had to do some re-thinking to start envisioning brighter colors than we originally dreamed up. And re-thinking means...more trips to Home Depot (and Lowe's. We don't know which we like better yet). We even took advantage of some down time between a wedding ceremony and reception this weekend to stop by and do some hashing out of paint colors. And, of course, we needed some evidence that we were the best-dressed paint buyers in the store.

The good news is - we're on our way! The second bedroom that used to look like this...

Now looks like this.

I know, wow. Primer. BUT - as of 10:30 last night, there were also paint swatches up on those primed areas, which is a pretty big first step for us! (We have some decision-making to do before our final choice can be publicly revealed, so this is all you get to see for now.) You're looking at our plans for this weekend...with a few friends and a trip to Top of the Park's last weekend thrown in there, of course!