Deck the Halls

This weekend I decked my halls and my walls by taking on quite a few projects. On Friday night I thought it would be a great idea to clean and repaint all of the baseboards and trim in my entire condo. Then on Saturday I repainted my guest bedroom. Painting always takes way longer than I expect. Move furniture. Tape Walls. Trim out the edges. Roll the walls. Trim again. Paint half of the walls. Make a late night trip to Home Depot to get more paint. Paint the rest of the walls. Remove tape. Touch up trim and ceilings. Make a trip to Lowe's to get the right kind of paint for the ceiling. Touch up ceilings again. Move everything back in. Phew. Plus, between the first and second coat I decided to touch up my walls in the rest of my condo. I was rather ambitious. But I was inspired recently when I went to a friend's house who had a gorgeous grey in her living room. Grey is the new neutral. Didn't you know? I knew. That's why last winter I painted my spare bedroom a dark grey. 


For a long time it looked like this. 

Boring. Empty. Leftovers.

So then I went with a deep grey. I liked it for a while.

Rustic Suede

But then when I saw my friend's pale grey I realized that my Rustic Suede needed to go. Plus, paint is one of those things where we say "If you don't like it, you can always change it. It's just paint." But do we? I rarely do. I don't want to succumb myself to going through that every weekend. Painting tables and chairs and picture frames? Fun. Painting walls? A job. I'll be honest. My thighs hurt. I'll go ahead and call that my workout for the month -which says more about me than the job, I think. 


So I knew needed a new color, but I get so overwhelmed in the color swatches in the Paint Department. I mentioned my plans to my coworker (who knows every paint color that exists - painting is literally her hobby) and she immediately mentioned Dolphin Fin by Behr. I googled it and liked what I saw. Home Depot didn't have a swatch, so I went on faith and bought it without ever seeing it. She was right. Dolphin Fin is a winner.

 Before

After

It is so much brighter and makes the room seem larger and calmer. So glad I painted it. I kind of like to do things like that by myself sometimes. It makes me feel independent. That's right. I'll paint my walls whenever I want and do whatever color I want. But half way into it when my 5'3" self had moved the ladder - three feet at a time - around the perimeter of the room close to fifty times, I began wishing that I had conned my sweet mother (who can roll the top of the walls without a step stool) to come help me. But I did it by myself. Through the night. I had to finish. I knew that I was having people over at 6:30 Sunday night - it was my week to host our Thurch small group. Looking back, I'm really glad that this was the case. If I hadn't been under pressure to finish, my condo would still be a wreck. I just kept trying to convince my 4 am Paint Covered Self of that. I finally got everything finished and decked the walls with my grandmother's mirror (free+white paint) and a few painted yard sale frames ($5 total+white paint).

Before

After

Befores:

Afters

So I wrapped up just before people started arriving. Perfect timing. And of course, while we were standing in the kitchen the biggest spider that I have ever seen fell or jumped or something right in the middle of us. It was huge. Silver dollar sized. And all body. Not one of those skinny, leggy kinds. I have never seen a spider that large, much less in my condo. I'm glad that I look like I have an infested home. Great. Why can't things like that happen when I don't have company over? Oh, I know why. Because then there wouldn't be guys there to kill it. View me any way you want just as long as you kill my spiders.

I'm glad I took a leap of faith with the Dolphin Grey. Here's hoping I don't change my mind again any time soon.