a dash of this and that

So you've all heard about the snowball effect, right? Well, have you ever noticed that that's what often happens in the world of home improvements? 

Ian and I decided that we were going to paint the inside of the front door yesterday morning. We visited our "paint store" in the basement (in an effort to not spend money and use what we already had) and found a gray color that I liked. 

We painted the door. We stepped back. We gagged.

Oh my goodness did it clash with all of the honey oak trim that is ALL through our house. 

It looked horrible.

We found a can of white trim paint in the basement. He started sanding. I started painting. Twelve hours and four coats of paint later, two walls of beadboard wainscoting were white. 

But I still have a hallway, a third living room wall, and a dining room worth of beadboard trim to paint. And now the walls need done. Which, in all honesty, haven't been painted for eight years and are in desperate need of some new paint anyway. It's been on the to-do list.

Then Brad comes home from work, and he decides that our ceilings need painted before the walls (which they do, but I'm typically not one to examine ceilings so it wasn't something that was extremely important to me.) Also, those honey oak colored beams? Yeah, we should probably give them a coat (or five coats) of paint too. 

And that, my friends, is how a front door paint-job snowballed into a whole-house job. 

So for my own sanity, I am already psyching myself up to view this as a summer-long project. I'm doing this by myself as much as possible (Brad's so busy and the last thing he needs is another project), so it's definitely not going to be a quick job! And that beadboard? Gosh is that time-consuming to paint. I think I'm going to go for a mix of white trim and the oak. It can be done quite tastefully, and I honestly can't even imagine the time it would take to paint all of the oak trim in our house. Besides, in the next few years, we're planning on ripping down the old trim and replacing it with a more substantial trim, so this is a bit of a temporary update.

Also, the garden beds and the big garden are planted. I might throw in a few more seeds, but everything is pretty much set. I planted impatiens in our landscaping, and I'm patiently waiting to see what perennials decide to spring forth from the soil for the summer season. 

The peonies are blooming like crazy. This is the first year that I've gotten a good crop of peonies. I think that this is the third year since I planted them. Anyway, I've got jars of peonies set out around the house. They are my most favorite flower. And I even spun up some pink yarn to match!

Ian made me a coffee table. It was my mother's day gift, but I just realized that I never posted a picture of it. He did it all by himself, and I love its simplicity. It's actually exactly what I wanted. He's getting really good at building things from wood. I started a board on Pinterest for him to mark projects that he could maybe tackle over the summer.

I pray that you have a most blessed day. 

I'm off to spend the day painting again!