Wednesday, October 31, 2007

New Home Owner Epiphany #1 : Painting

As of today we are homeowners. Woohoo! We're also still renters until the middle or end of November so that works out well for giving us time to move gradually.

Prior to the big move-in we are doing some upgrades that are easier when there isn't any furniture in the way. Today, our first day, we tackled some painting.


They tell us that paint is the cheapest way to dramatically change the look of any room. They further tell us that doing it yourself will save literally thousands of dollars of labor.

Are you with me so far?

Our new home has white walls and neutral / whitish carpet. We decided to paint the entire interior a sandy / tan/ khaki color (except the ceilings since the whole place is less than 4 years old and the ceiling paint looks satisfactory to good).

One room down and we're liking the white walls a lot better.

It's not so much that we're not up for the work. We did really well with the whole idea of "prep like heck and then painting is a breeze concept" except that painting is not exactly a breeze. And prepping is time consuming. We discovered that there is a reason that house painters get paid a lot of money. They earn it!

Now I'm a guy so I instantly think: well, if I had all state of the art painting tools and fancy tapes and articulated ladders then I would be able to whip out a professional job in no time.

Reality comes in the form of realizing that I cannot possibly buy the state of the art painting supplies. We're talking thousands of dollars of tools and equipment. So we buy less expensive and therefore less efficient equipment.

Reality also slaps us upside the head in the form of: whipping out a professional job in no time is exactly what professionals do. And how do you become a professional? You paint a lot of freaking rooms. To other people's standards. On other people's schedules.

After mutual agreement we've decided to paint the two upstairs bedrooms and the upstairs bathroom. The money we save on paint will go toward replacing the light fixture and mirror in the newly painted bathroom and replacing our dining room chandelier.

We're both all for the DIY thing but one room at a time is more our speed. We have just under two weeks to get our shit together for the movers and that is going to take a lot of time also.

All this bitching aside, we're super happy to own a home. And doing projects together has been a productive and pleasant way to spend time together. It's nice to know that we make a good team.

Photo:: Ned Matura, www.thisoldhouse.com

1 comment:

John Cowart said...

Great news about your new home.

We've only lived her for 12 years and I haven't finished the painting yet.

Also, I'm still slapping the bare walls in the places where the light switches used to be in the old house.

We'll get moved in someday.