My sexy kitchen

I am definitely a happier cook now that there's some color on the walls.

Before the Paint job

The House Project

I remember coming back from deployment in November 2009. I also remember moving in with Paul and thinking to myself "this house needs some color on the walls"...after Paul and I married, I kept bugging him that we needed to paint. We never actually sat down and picked paint colors out though. We kept telling ourselves that we were going to paint the house and that eventually we'd go to Lowes to choose our colors. We kept procrastinating until Paul was just about ready to deploy, but thankfully we did choose colors together before he left for Afghanistan. With me no longer being deployable (long story and it makes me angry to think about it) I decided that I would make it my project, while Paul is gone, to paint the house.

I was nervous about doing this on my own. I had once decided to wall paper a room (from a house I was renting) with disastrous results (Pat, Johnson, Paul...you guys know what I'm talking about). I didn't know anything about different paint finishes or which one was best for the different rooms in the house. I jumped on Google (Google is my savior for so many things!) and Googled until I found all the answers I needed. Armed with my new found knowledge I went to Lowes. I decided to start off small. I looked at the different paints and decided on Valspar because they had a bigger color selection.

Elise's bedroom: Pink paint in a satin finish. I wanted to add a few things to her room though, such as curtains, a toy box, night table...etc.

Living room: A green/grey (picked out by Paul) also in a satin finish for our accent wall. The rest of the walls, a light tan to warm up the room, I guess.

Hallway & Computer desk area (which will be turned into the kitchen table area after deployment): The light tan color we chose for the living room.

Paul's Man Cave: I have a lot of work to do in there. I want to move a green couch we have in the garage to this room and move out the extra piece of our sectional. The color I painted this room was the color Paul picked out. In a satin finish. I painted 2 walls and left the other 2 white. I really liked the way it turned but I'll have to wait until Paul comes home and can check it out for himself.

My Kitchen: The kitchen was the only place that I picked the color for alone. I told Paul that I had no issues with the colors we chose together for the rooms BUT since I am the cook in the family, the kitchen was all mine. I chose an apple red. The original color swatches we looked through were from Walmart and I bought the actual paints from Lowes so I had to try to color match our original colors with swatches from Lowes. I was in "The Walmart" (as Elise calls it) one day and decided to give the Walmart paints a try. They had the brand "Glidden" or something like that and I chose the apple red paint in a semi-gloss finish. I was excited! Finally, I was going to paint my kitchen. First, painting a kitchen is a real pain in the ass. Painting around all of the cabinets, moving the stove and the refrigerator...very time consuming. Second: the Glidden paint was terrible! It was runny and extremely thin, I had gotten used to the nice thick paint that Valspar provided. I painted one wall because the optimism in me said, "give this crappy paint a chance, you might be surprised". I was soooooooo wrong! Once the paint dried up it was splotchy some spots were red others were pink and it looked terrible! I drove to Lowes and picked out a Valspar paint in "spanish tile" which was a dark red, also in a semi-gloss finish. While the Valspar paint was so much better it definitely was not the wonderful satin finish that applied evenly and dried quickly. With the satin finish, I didn't even have to apply a second coat, it looked amazing immediately after it dried (which took about 2 hours or so). The semi-gloss however was a totally different story. I did have to apply 2 coats but the Valspar definitely worked better than the cheap Walmart paint I bought originally for the kitchen.

Painting the house keeps me busy and makes me feel like I am actually doing something productive during my weekends when I miss Paul the most. I still have the overall light tan color to paint on the walls, the 2 bathrooms and the bedroom to paint. Since I am now supposedly deploying some time in May or June or July, I am trying to paint the rest of the rooms before I leave.

Flowers and a groomed dog

Yesterday morning I decided it was time to take Tinkerbell to the groomers because she was looking shaggy. I took her to Kathy's groomers off of 41A and Handley (Behind Mama G's pancake house). They did an amazing job for a great price!!

Yesterday, after we returned home from the groomers, there was someone at the door. It was a woman holding these beautiful flowers! They were from Paul. I have the most amazing husband in the world! I totally wasn't expecting this and Stargazer lilies are my favorite!!!!