How I Spent the Entire Year's Decorating Budget... by July

It all started when Dan commented, "You know how I have the day off on Friday? Well, I was thinking of painting another wall in our bedroom."

My brain instantly turned to despair. No! A precious vacation day will be wasted! We won't be able to go anywhere or do anything as a family. It will be like any other day for me, and we'll only have one more painted wall to show for it!

"Or," I said brightly, "you could not do that!"

"Doesn't it bother you that only one wall in our bedroom is painted?"

"Not really," I said shrugging.

"Well, it bothers me."

Boom! There it was. I decided in that moment that I had to do something. You see, one of my primary goals in decorating my home--THEE primary goal, actually--is making our home a beautiful and comfortable space for my husband and children. So if something is bothering my hubby, that's a big problem.

Just to give you a bit more context, Dan and I painted as many rooms as we could before we moved into our new-to-us home in 2015. One room we did not get to was the master bedroom, which was painted a yellowy-sand color. In 2016, I decided to use the Eat-the-Elephant-One-Bite-at-a-Time method and paint one wall per weekend, until I had our entire bedroom painted. Well... I did get two walls done in that single weekend, but then I didn't touch the project for another almost two years. (For more on the slow evolution of our master bedroom, you can click over here.)

I knew something had to be done about our bedroom walls, but, frankly, Dan and I just don't have the time or opportunity to do it ourselves. Dan has limited vacation from work, and I'm always hustling around like a crazy person trying to keep the boys alive and shaping them into respectable little humans. Dan and I could try to paint the walls ourselves, but it would consume an entire weekend, be done well enough, and we would have no idea how to tackle the vaulted ceiling, so we would have probably just skipped it.

That very day, I decided to use the remainder of my yearly decorating budget to hire a professional whom my friend and former neighbor had highly recommended. To my surprise, he headed over to our house as soon as we hung up the phone, so he could see the space and give me an estimate. Because my ceiling lines were not exactly, er, clean (my fault), and the ceiling needed a bit of patching and freshening up, he recommended that we paint the ceiling as well. I showed him another problem area in the master bathroom. Although the previous owners had done a very nice job painting the trim in there white (love!), they had forgotten to caulk the trim between primer and paint, so there were unsightly black cracks between the base trim and the walls. It wasn't a huge deal, but the painter said it would be an easy and inexpensive fix that would make a big difference.

Because the trim in our bath is white (and because I looooooove the look of white trim), I also asked the painter for an estimate to paint the trim white in our bedroom as well. He actually cringed and tried very hard to talk me out of it. Although his words did nothing to sway me (I know what I like), he did finally convince me to drop it when he quoted me and outlandish price to have it done. (To the tune of three times the cost of having the ceiling, walls, and bathroom trim done!) I still dream of crisp white trim, but I realize I'll probably have to do it myself someday. Someday...

Anyhoo, on Wednesday morning, Dan and I prepared for the painters to come. We took off outlet covers, removed the artwork from the walls, moved the furniture toward the center of the room, etc. The painter and his brother arrived at 8:05 in the morning, and he pulled out from our street at 2:45 pm. They did a beautiful job. The ceiling lines are crisp, the walls look so much more soothing to the eyes, and the trim in the bathroom looks much more finished. Even better, the painter finished earlier than he expected, so he charged me almost $100 less than he quoted me! (So I guess I do have a little bit more decorating money to play with for the remainder of the year.)

Just a note on color, because I adore picking out paint colors. As I mentioned, the walls are Anew Gray by Sherwin-Williams. I love this color, and you'll find it in many rooms of our home. It's a warm gray (or greige, if you use that term) that pretty much goes with anything. One of the times that I poked my head into the room to see how the painters were doing, they both commented on how much they loved the color, and one of them told me he was going to use that exact color in his kitchen. So there's that. I chose Pure White by Sherwin-Williams for the ceiling. It's a very clean-looking, true white without any hint of yellow. I plan to use that as my go-to white as we continue to slowly transform the house.

And that, friends, is how I spent the remainder of my 2017 decorating budget in July. (The rest of my budget went to light fixtures and other odds and ends I picked up over the course of the year.) It's going to be a looooong five months before I get more funds, but I really believe it was worth it. Not only will my husband no longer be bothered by the mismatched walls, but I am also so satisfied with all the time that hiring a professional saved me and Dan. I mean, if it took two professional, efficient painters almost seven hours to paint our room, can you imagine how much it would have taken Team Dan and Kristin? I don't even want to guess! In addition, I'm sure Dan and I would have done a passable job as we've painted many a wall in our days, but the pros did a much nicer job than we would have done. So was it worth hiring out? Abso-to-the-lutely yes.

So, tell me... Is there a job in your house that you feel like it was worth hiring out for? Do you wish you could hire something out?

P.S. We haven't rehung the wall art since the painters left, and the bed is not made styled, so I didn't include photos of the room's overall progress. I will in a future post though!