We got a lot from a few coats of paint

It was a long, working weekend, but the payoff is spectacular. I’m not sure how I’m going to write this post as in my head it’s just me saying over and over again in as many ways as I can, how great the living room looks. Seriously, there is no way I can convey the incredibleness of results of the paint job mixed with the wood trim. I’m not sure if it’s because the room has been a filthy mess since the day we bought it, or because it has never been a functional living space for us but we cannot get over the transformation and the incredible feeling of knowing that room is ours and that eventually we’ll actually be able to use it. In fact, if we could I think I would squeeze all of our belongings in it and seal off the rest of the house and just live in there. What?! It’s probably about the size of a NYC apartment!

Of course to accomplish all this we had to sacrifice our normal weekend sleeping in and I think we literally did not sit down from for more than 30 minutes at any point starting Friday night, but after we pulled up the drop cloth, took the tape off the wall and removed the tape covering the trim it was all worth it. In fact we didn’t make it to bed until 2 am because we spent about an hour just staring at the room and shaking our head in wonder. All you homeowners out there might have difficulty remembering the distinction, but It’s not just that the room looks great or that we are getting closer to having one room done- it’s that for the first time since we each left for college that our residence is our Home (capital H). Well, at least one room of a home. Even when we bought the place it very much felt like an apartment-cream walls everywhere with the details comprised of the cheapest and most generic possible. There were none of the touches that makes a house personalized- perhaps with the exception for the green kitchen, but that feels more like a rental gone wrong. I think for the first time it really sank in that we can do all of those things we’ve previously been unable to- we can paint the walls without fear of losing a deposit or knowing we’ll have to cover them back up. We can get window coverings that are not $3 blinds from Lowes. We can pick out furniture without fear of having it not fit in a new setting.

I think the overwhelming wonder and amazement last night came from all of this coming together at once- the relief that despite all the stumbling blocks and issues we weren’t sure how to handle, that it all turned out well in the end; the immense pride and elation that comes in finishing something you’ve worked so hard on; and that we are able to create something that looks good from a design sense (we think so anyway). We’ve long been thinking that if we could just get one room done it could be a sort of showcase for others- a testament of what we were doing for those who were scared off by the conditions of the rest of the house. I think what we didn’t bank on however was that it would become a testament to ourselves- of what we were capable of, of the promise for the rest of the house, and of how committed we were to making it beautiful and making it ours.