Well look at you!

It's been a pretty crazy week. We had some relentless rain here in the place where I live and that rain would not let up until it made it's way into our new home and soaked a portion of our only recently cleaned carpet. It's like if the rain could talk it would say, "Welcome to home-ownership!" It's been a little frustrating, but we're powering through. Literally. I just used my first power tool today. Bobby's drill. Bobby has been helping as much as he can, but without time off this summer and his medical boards coming up, he doesn't have much time for home improvement- or in this case, maintenance. So I'm drilling holes in the dry wall to give the walls some air.

Yesterday I was out in the front yard playing with Sophie and checking on my gladiolas (they're coming along nicely) and I found this gorgeous lily. I was thrilled! I'm finding that I really enjoy gardening. I have no idea what the heck I'm doing, but it's still a lot of fun. I inherited these from the previous owners. There were a lot of weeds to pick and I almost picked these but I thought I'd wait and make sure they weren't something I'd want to keep. I'm sure glad I didn't pull these beauties out. Right next to these are some hydrangeas which have always been one of my Mom's favorites. I was so glad to see them come up and I'm trying really hard not to kill them!

The Dark Side

I painted my first room this week. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, until I thought I was finished and found all these areas I needed to touch up. So I was up on my step stool for another hour painting tiny little strokes near the ceiling. Then this morning I found 5 or 6 other areas that need touching up. Now I'm not sure I'll ever be finished!

The other night I asked Bobby to help get me started and show me some pointers. I did a few strokes to "cut in" - that's painter talk - and panicked. I hated it! Against the yellow I was painting over it looked almost purple. Bobby suggested I go ahead and paint a whole wall before I decided to pick a new color. Well the next morning I painted an entire wall and I definitely liked it more. So I continued to the next wall, and the next wall, and then next wall until I was done. The funny thing is, I'm still not entirely sure about it. Sometimes I think, "way to go Katherine, you picked a really cool and complex color with a lot of gray in it, but also some brown and with the right accent colors it will look really cool." But then sometimes I think, "Who are you kidding Katherine, you don't know crap about color."

And sometimes I worry about painting so much grey in the house. Will it be gloomy and depressing? I don't think it will, but what if it makes us all really dark and depressed? What if start wearing lots of heavy black eye makeup and listening to death metal. People will be like, "Oh yeah, that was Katherine's dark period" and it will all pivot on my decision to use gray for the color of our walls in one of the most important rooms in the house!

What have I done?! :)

Here's the look we're going for, sans the bathtub. Soon I hope to paint the trim white. (First I want to paint the girls' room. Our color of choice for their room? Black, to intimidate my subordinates. Just joking.)



(Here's a picture of the living room before we bought the house with the previous owner's stuff):

And here's a picture of the opposite corner of the room in the new color. (Doesn't even look like the same room!):