Painting all the things was of priority when we moved. Empty rooms are easiest to paint for obvious reasons, but knowing that all the walls needed painted meant that we couldn't really settle in to any of the rooms in the house before the walls were painted as furniture would just need moved around again for painting purposes so painting was a task that I tackled as quickly as possible both before and after move-in day.
Painting the kids rooms were the first tasks I accomplished once we took ownership of the house. Because they're smaller it's harder to move the furniture around to get to the walls so I really wanted to get it done ASAP. I know this from experience as I had to paint their rooms in our old house with furniture in them. What ends up happening is having to shift the furniture around as you paint unless you have the ability to move it out completely. It's just not fun. So, their bedrooms were painted early and first.
After their bedrooms I tackled the kitchen project because it was very important to me to have a functional kitchen, call me crazy! We moved in late June, I was painting the family room, on my birthday (happy birthday to me...), about 2 weeks after that, and theeeen it was time to shift attention to our bedroom. I was hoping to get it done before we moved in, which obviously didn't happen, but I also knew that it was large enough that I could move furniture to the center of the room and work around it if necessary, which is what I ended up doing. 2015: the summer I was perpetually covered in paint.
Before:
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| Paint samples on the wall :) |
Prior to taking possession of the house we were under the impression that these walls were actually wallpapered and I was dreeeaaaaading dealing with wallpaper removal (Been there. Done that. Don't want to do it again.) It was a huge victory when we realized it was just paint!
After:
Thankfully it's feeling pretty done now! Mark still has a couple boxes that need unpacked (side eye) and then we'll have a pretty good sized open space/corner so maybe we'll add a fun chair or something down the road, but feeling pretty good about the space for now.
We also made a quick update to the kitchen and added some blinds to the bay window. We've known for a while that we wanted to add some. Now that it's staying light out later we needed to make a move. Due to the level of the sun when I'm making dinner it was practically blinding me on sunny days, and it was starting to bother us while we were actually eating now that it's light out even later! Not that I'm complaining about the sun shining in the evenings, but it added motivation for us to get this task accomplished!
Kind of hard to take pictures of blinds, but you get the idea. Also, as you can see on the center pendant light above, an unnamed child recently decided while not being watched for 3 seconds that it would be a good idea to try swinging those pendant lights, which then crashed into one another, which shattered one of the shades. Now all of them are going to need replaced so that we have a matching set. The light was one of the few things in the kitchen we didn't need to do anything with when we moved in. One step forward, two back -_- But the blinds are up!
It's crazy to think that this time last year we were in the process of finalizing the purchase of our house. Right about now we were scrambling to try to get the necessary things done so the house could be somewhat inspected and in required condition for closing. It was a very stressful time to say the least. All worth it, but things are much more enjoyable this year!
