Painting w/ Nana

I am a lucky girl. I’m a lucky girl because I have a pretty awesome family that support me through thick and thin. My sweet, loving, hard-working, chiseled (hee hee) husband, code name: Sweetie, puts up w/ me (and even supports) my recent slackin’-around-the-house ways thanks to my newly found love of blogging. My girls light up my life w/ joy and pride (except when they are being extremely whiny and annoying – haha!) and, at the ages of 8 and 5, still get all bummed when I have to leave for the evening, like to go play volleyball 🙂 My parents are incredible and would still do ANYTHING for me, my husband and my girls – especially babysit for a week at a time and stuff us full of yummy Korean food!

The rest of my family is awesome too (from Gooma & Goompa and Papa to my bro & Sweetie’s sis & bro and of course my Aj & UB) but this post is all about my amazing mother-in-law, aka Nana/Mom, who is so caring and giving and has more energy than the Energizer Bunny. I love her dearly and I’m pretty sure she loves me back. 🙂 Now how many girls can honestly say that?!? Just kidding. I know a lot of you out there can, but dang it, I’m lucky! 🙂

Recently, Nana decided that it was once again time to come down to help us out w/ yet another project around the house. When she asked the hubster if there were any projects we wanted to tackle, nothing came to his mind but an off-handed remark I had made to him about a month before saying “Yeah, it would be nice to *one day* paint our living room kitchen”, *one day* meaning in maybe 5 years! But before I knew what had even happened, we had a date scheduled for the project and plans in place, which meant I’d better  get off my arse and figure out what the heck I wanted to do – Yikes!

Not only did her plans for this visit include painting, it also included shampooing our family room carpet, babysitting the girls so Sweetie and I could spend some “us” time in NYC and then taking them up to NYC to meet up with us for a couple days and then keepin’ them up there while Sweettie and came back HOME for a few. See, I TOLD you I was lucky!! 🙂

We had a whole lot of crazy stuff going on around painting time, starting with a weekend visit from friends just days before P-day. These friends helped me finalize colors, suggested doing an accent wall AND one of ’em even took it upon himself to start and finish moving all of our family room furniture out of the way, despite my protestations (which quickly turned to gratitude). Did I mention I have awesome friends, too? 🙂 Immediately following was another weekend visit from my cousin and his family the evening OF finishing up as well as a couple school conferences, chaperoning a class field trip, various appointments and 2 nights of vball in between. It was craaaaazy. BUT… I somehow managed to squeeze it all in AND get prepped for painting. Yeah!

Here are some before pix.

The Family Room: We still watched TV like this for a couple days!

Thanks Mike, for your motivation, strength and determination in moving all this crap away from the walls and out of the room entirely, even when I tried to convince you we could wait and do it later ourselves. That woulda SO sucked!

The Kitchen: That’s Nana in the corner… that’s her in the spot. light…. 🙂 Ugh! Could BARELY stand to have it this way for the good part of a day. But thanks to some fancy planning on my part, it was like this for only the good part of a day (and not 2)! 🙂

Painting went as smoothly and as swiftly as one could have hoped. No major spills or mishaps to report. We enjoyed catching up on family news, singing along to the oldies and even chit-chatting about this very blog! 🙂

And now the after…

Family room w/ new paint and cleaner carpets – wahoo!

Thanks for honing in on the main color with me, Cat, which luckily turned out to be a color I had already use in the hallway. No worries about clashing there! And thanks Mike and Amy for suggesting the accent wall and helping me pick that color out! LOVE my accent wall – it totally makes that fireplace POP (in better lighting)!

Fab new kitchen 🙂

Aaaaah. The kitchen is so much nicer. Actually, the color wasn’t all that different from the original, but it just “felt” nicer and new, ya know what I mean? 🙂

And finally, thanks SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much Mom!! You are a rock star. I love you bunches and bunches and will forever be grateful for all you do for us and oh SO much more! 🙂

The Painters Extraordinaire!

The End. 🙂