painting the house

In two different weeks in August, our girls went to stay with their gracious grandparents in Fort Wayne! In the first week we thought..."Hmmm... we have new carpet going in soon, we're tired of the (although beautiful) really dark cave-like wall color in our house, the girls are away, and we already have the primer and tools to paint...let's spend $40 & one quick eve to paint the walls a new, brighter, fun color!" Um, yeah. 4 late (LATE) nights, 4 gallons of paint, extra supplies, additional primer, and two tired time-wasting people later, we were done!

 

The couch and chair in our living area were getting replaced with some trade money we had earned through the business, and they were GROSS (14 years old, covered in dog hair, dog urine, and dirt), so we put them at the end of the drive one eve at 10pm and they were both gone 4 minutes later! This was before Dave Ramsey's classes started, and in retrospect I wish we would have sold them - even for $10 - but, at the time we just wanted them out of the way. Gosh, our way of thinking about money sure has changed a lot.

It took a lot of primer to cover the brown.

We even painted samples on the wall first, but the yellow just didn't, well....it looks a lot better in this photo than in did in real life. It was a slightly blinding actually. Yuck!

Soooo... another coat of primer, and then we went for something much more neutral. We both love it, and someday when we've saved some money for it, I am totally pumped to fill our walls with our own artwork & photos of our girls & family. That will be the "bright" in the downstairs! Until then, we are enjoying an empty, much cleaner, lighter room!

On somewhat of a sidenote, Dan has been driving this Tribute around for 140,000 miles and we've kept pumping $ into it to keep it alive without a car payment. We both joked when we signed on the dotted line for carpet that his car would obviously die as soon as we signed. About 2 weeks later it did. On the highway. It was towed and the mechanic (and 3 others via phone) told us it could be as much as an $8,000 fix and the car was only worth about $150. Dave Ramsey jokes that when you have a cash flow problem, "Murphey", as in Murphey's law, moves in with you. We are in the process to desperately trying to find Murphey a new home!!!  (By the way, Dan got a used Honda Pilot, which we hope to drive for the next 10 years and 200,000 miles!!!!!)

 

The old carpet was ripped out...

This is the new carpet going in. Blakley's was AWESOME & I would highly recommend them if you need carpet! 

Once we have the whole room done, I'll take some photos. :)