What spare time?: A crazy Saturday morning idea

Three weeks ago, I started the house painting project. You know the one I've been talking about wanting to do for years...to paint the front hall, living room, dining room and hallway. Because for at least 2 years I've hated the paint in those rooms.

Aside from the fact that I didn't love the colour (it's a yellowish-beige and it was there when we moved in), all those rooms were painted with a flat paint. So it showed every, single mark. It was covered in food stains and boot stains and finger prints and probably toe prints. It had yellow crayon on one wall, and puke stains on another. And in one area, the paint had been put on so thinly that you could see the colour underneath (it was pink, by the way). To put it bluntly, it was gross and I hated it.

And so, 3 weeks ago I got started on what I anticipated being a multi-month project. I figured the only way I would get it done is to paint in little bits -- a wall here, a wall there. I started with the first coat on the baseboards and door frames in the hall. They were all the same flat colour as the walls and we decided they should be white -- and semi-gloss so you can actually wipe the finger prints off when you need to. And because there's 6 door frames in that hall -- just one coat took me 3 hours.

Flash forward 2 weeks to last Saturday morning at 9 a.m. while Ryan and I are sitting in the family room drinking coffee:
Me: Can you finish the caulking on the baseboards this weekend so I can finish painting them?
Ryan: Sure.
Me: I'm just really motivated right now to get going on this project. One of these days I'm going to be tempted to have a painting party and just get it done.
Ryan: So why don't we?
Me: Today?
Ryan: Sure.

And so, we did.

We called up some friends who wanted to help and they said they were free after 2ish, Ryan got to work finishing the caulking and taking shelves and pictures off the wall and I went and bought the paint (we had, by the way, already chosen the colour).

Just after 1 p.m., I started painting. The kids even pitched in for awhile.

Our friends were over by about 4 and it was an all out painting party. Their daughter played with our kids downstairs while we painted. We breaked for pizza and by 11 p.m., the hall, dining room and living room had been completely repainted.

The next morning, Ryan put the second coat on the 'feature' walls -- two walls in an accent colour -- and I finished up the second coat on the baseboards and some touchups.

By 2 p.m. we were done and still had time to go for a bike ride with the kids.

So what's left? The front hall and the small area that leads downstairs. But the 'big' parts of the job is done. Something that I thought would take months to do ended up taking a day and a half -- all because I had a crazy idea at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning.

Oh yeah, and the house looks awesome now!

It's hard to really show in pictures, but here's an idea of what my house looks like now.

BEFORE: