Painting a house

$3700 for painting a 2131 square foot house?! That doesn't even include painting the ceilings, which is extra! And that was the least expensive of 4 quotes I got from paint contractors. Hhhmmm....with the backyard still needing landscaping and dining room and living room furnitures that still need purchasing, we opted to paint the house ourselves to save money. Thus, our painting adventure commences....

Before we started, it never occurred to me that painting a house could be so time consuming and not as easy as I thought it would be. Lots of details to think about, prep work to do and supplies to buy. Just choosing paint color was an ordeal!

It all started with a desire to have walls with colors other than white or off-white. Having been renters for a several years, we are so tired of looking at boring white walls so we promised ourselves that when we bought our home, our walls would have more interesting colors. Now that we are homeowners, John and I were excited about finally having the freedom to add some "uumph" to our home's interior. Off to Home Depot we go one weekend, with the intent of walking out of there with our cans of paint. An hour later and a handful of color swatches in hand, we leave Home Depot with each of us sporting a headache and without our paint cans. We thought we knew what colors we wanted....we had the basic idea anyway. We did not realize that there were several tones or shades of "warm green" and "burgundy" we wanted for our bedroom. As for the masterbath, the "spa colors of blue and green" I envisioned came in several tones or shades, depending on whether it was from Behr or Sherwin or some other brand. So we took our favorite color swatch shades from different brands and took them back to our house.

Ever tried picturing what the color will look like for a particular wall with a small swatch? Well, it's a pretty difficult feat that takes a lot of imagination so be prepared to either take risks with the swatches or purchase a quart of the color and apply it on the wall, which could eat into your budget if you have more than 5 colors in mind. So we opted for the cheap version and "imagined" what the wall color would look like during different times of the day and took the risk. We chose the best shades of red, green, yellow, blue, purple, pink, blue and orange. The following weekend, we're back at Home Depot and walked out with about $320 worth of primer (for the garage), paint (for the garage, master bed and bath), equipment and supplies. We thought we'd start the project with painting the garage first and then moving on to the master bed and bath. The rest of the paint we'll buy as we go along.

Two garage walls later, John and I decided that there is a reason why paint contractors exist. Because of people like John and me! We found out that painting is just not our cup of tea. The details and the patience involved in the job is something we couldn't be bothered with. So we threw in the towel and called the contractor I liked the best out of the four I interviewed. He was not the least expensive, but because I perceived him to be a straight shooter (honest) and he indicated he could start earlier than the others, I went with him. $4000 and several exotic color names later, our home looks lovely. We do not regret any of the colors we chose.....not bad for imagination and color swatches. In all, we have a total of 11 colors in our home with the bedrooms and baths having the most colors in them.

Well, 2 home projects are out of the way: painting and window treatments. Actually, still waiting on the window treatments to be installed. Better call my contractor. It's been 3 weeks since we made the deposit so should be expecting the order to be here very soon. Yeah, better give him a buzz....