Barely Related to Knitting

Two weeks ago, the husband was out of town for work for about five days.  So I decided to paint the living room.  We've lived in this house for nearly seven years now, and have done no painting whatsoever.  It's still entirely beige.  My mother, by contrast, hadn't owned her new house for two weeks before every room was a different, bold color.  Neither the husband nor I are against painting, we just hadn't made it happen.

Last spring, Ace Hardware had a deal where you could get a quart of paint for free.  We found the particular mossy green color I had always had in mind for the living room, and Mom got a can and I got one.  Our living room is a long open space that's really the same room as the dinning room, and is open to the kitchen.  So the plan was to paint  just two walls to set the living room space apart from the rest of it.  We thought two quarts would probably be enough.  I should have asked my dad to pick up a quart, too.

When the same get-a-quart-free deal rolled around this year, Mom and I figured it was time to use the paint from last year.  With the husband out of town for a bit, we had a great opportunity to surprise him.  He had known we were getting the paint last year, but hadn't heard about it since.  So when he left for the airport, I took Lil One to my mother-in-law's, gathered equipment, and got ready.

Here's the before picture, ready to paint, with husband's motorcycle cover doing duty as a couch protector.

(Standing next to the dinning room table to take this picture -- see the chair in the lower right)

Mom and my brother came over Sunday afternoon to help paint.  Turns out that we needed three quarts, which only became apparent after Ace was closed for the day.  Here is Sunday's progress, and the patches we couldn't quite get.

So Monday morning I went back to Ace for one more quart, and that afternoon while kiddo was napping I finished the job.  Painted over those two patches, and gave a second coat to the bits where we had been skimping to try to make the paint be enough.  Here are the after pictures with everything back in place except throw pillows and the pictures on the wall.

(On the left of this picture you can see where the room is open to the kitchen and the door to the garage.)

 

Here's how this is all (barely) related to knitting -- as I put the furniture back I re-arranged a little bit, bringing  in another chair from the sun porch and creating a lovely little knitting corner by the window.  Of course this was also a great opportunity to organize my living room stash.  While it was all spread out in the den during painting, it took nearly half the floor space.

Husband didn't say much about it, and it took a couple of days to get a sense of whether or not he liked it.  He does, he just doesn't care very much about what color the walls are, which is probably part of why it's all still beige.

I love it, and am now plotting about the laundry nook and the half-bath.  Yellow.  Somewhere between sunshine and cornbread.