The lamest blogger ever

This goes out to my father-in-law, who keeps checking for updates, God bless him.

My excuse? Well, that whole holiday thing - home to Missouri for four days, just in time to catch a blizzard. A lovely novelty when you know you will be leaving the cold and spending months shovelling snow and driving in slush. The house did NOT close over the holidays - finally funded on December 28, and registered on December 29. F. put the keys in my hand that morning, I handed her several bottles of wine. Could barely wait until the Husband got home, and then we rushed over and ran from room to room, talking about what we were going to do with every square inch, what would be in every closet, and how much money we were going to have to spend to hire professionals to help us.

I launched the next morning - hit Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore and Home Depot for paint samples, and slapped them up on the walls - I had very clear ideas about what I wanted, but had to get the Husband's buy-in, and he needed visuals. The area of greatest debate - the kitchen. The avocado green and harvest gold wallpaper of butterflies and daisies was going, but we were left with stark white cabinets, white appliances, a harvest gold banquette, and ivory tile backsplash with scattered butterflies. And the debate extended not just to WHAT color but how much - the cabinets had outer framing, and we were toying with the idea of painting the inner recessed area one color and the framing another - but could not agree on those colors. I put three colors on the cabinets for visual reference.

The Husband agreed with the living room choices - SW Sundew on most of the walls, Behr Pure Earth over the brick fireplace. He didn't like either color I'd picked for the guest bedroom, but graciously allowed me to paint it deep gold (BM Showtime). In return, I let him pick the deep blue of the master bedroom. I tried not to smirk when he went for the color I'd chosen for the kitchen cabinets - BM Nantucket Gray (which isn't gray at all but really green with gray notes), though we still debated how much cabinet to paint. He liked the color so much we decided to put it in the dining room as well. The biggest leap was getting him to agree to paint the panelling downstairs (the family room that would be his office). I didn't think I could live with the dark, cheap, laminated panelling - but it was glued, not nailed, to the drywall, so if we pulled it out, the drywall would come too. Too big a project right away. I did a test spot (BM Yarmouth Blue - we appear to following a nautical East Coast theme). He was still dubious. Must wear him down.

I wasn't scheduled to go back to work until January 7, but the Husband had to get back to his part-time day gig; optimistically we'd arranged for movers to come on January 9th - that gave us ten days to get the bulk of cosmetic updates done before the furniture arrived. Yes, we can! And did...