House Painting Party

My husband and I currently bought our first home! We are really excited. We bought a short sale, so it has been a very long process. We put an offer on the house at the end of September and it is now mid- January and we are finally able to move in! We live in Southern California, where the prices are pretty high. We live in a cute little community called Redlands. We absolutely love it. We bought a small three bedroom starter home. It is a great place for my little growing family. Tuesday we got the call from the realtor that we could finally get the keys to our house. We were so excited! One of the first things we did was run down to Home Depot and get some paint. We have been dying to try horizontal stripes in a room. Our master bedroom is not huge,  so we wanted to make it look bigger. We were not too fond of the green color that was on the walls. We chose white walls with gold stripes. We did not realize what a huge process this actually was going to be. Let me tell you, many times I wanted to quit! Luckily,  every night Abbi (our daughter) went to bed at my parent's house, so we would rush over to our new house and begin to have our very own "Painting Party." This consisted of Diet Coke, Trader Joe's Gummy Bears, loud music, and painting with my very fun Hubby! It took us about four nights to finally get it to where we wanted it. We are in love with the results. The hard work was worth it. I think next time my husband might just hire some one! Ha ha! All I have to say is,  it has been said that moving and remodeling is one of the most stressful things on a marriage, and I can understand why!! We have moved 12 times since we have been married! (we moved a lot in college) My husband is a perfectionist, so it might be better if we hire some one to do Abbi's room next! lol All in all, it was a lot of fun, and it gave us a total of four painting date nights!

The before pictures! The room is a sage green.

Preparing the room to paint.

Taping the edges.

Mixing the white paint.

We had to do several white coats, because the green showed through.

Day two starting all over again!

 Mix and pour!

 Getting the top and bottom corners, and edges was my speciality!

                            

So happy we are almost done with the white!

Now time to tape the wall for the stripes. You must measure your wall and divide inches between how many stripes you want. We decided to do seven stripes. We did four gold, and three white. We wanted a gold stripe to be at the bottom and top.

This took a lot longer than we thought, because the first time we tried to do it with out a Level. The next day we came back refreshed and used a Level my Dad had. This made all the difference! It went so much faster. Pencil it along the way, and then tape.

You tape up, and down, so it is covering the white. It might look funny, but that is the way you need it so you can paint the gold!

We painted a few coats of gold paint.

You don't want to wait till it is completely dry to take off the tape.

Here is our finished project! We finished it late, so the lighting isn't the best.

We put our bed up, and I love it!

 

Here is our dresser we also finished!  We found an old dresser on Craigslist for $40 and just spray painted it black! It looks brand new. I am so happy with the result of this little home project too! It looks great in our room!

Now it is time for you to get out there and have a "Painting Party" of your own! It is a lot of work, but it is worth it! You can look at your beautiful walls everyday. It really makes you happy!