Painting Some Loooooong Walls

Yay, my third post of the day! Today is my "when it rains, it pours" approach to blogging...gotta get all the news in before life gets too busy again!

Anyway, I spent most of the first week of May recuperating from my crazy busy last week of April. However, there was one project waiting for me at home; it was a project that we'd been hoping to finish for months, but hadn't had time to do on account of our many busy weekends. We wanted to finish painting all our downstairs walls!

We'd painted most of our downstairs last October and November. However, we'd left two large walls unpainted, since we weren't exactly sure what we'd do with them. It took us a while to decide what to do. Eventually we decided on a color (we went with a slightly lighter shade of the blue-gray paint that was already in our kitchen). However, after purchasing the paint, our weekends got pretty busy throughout the spring. So at last, when we finally had a free weekend, what did we do?? That's right...we turned our house upside down once again!

Time to move all the furniture again...sigh.

Although we only had two walls to paint last weekend, they were big ones; the rear wall is the longest in the house...it's the entire width of the house, in fact! We also painted the west wall in our front room (with the piano).

Luckily for us, these walls were fairly straight and rectangular, so painting them was relatively straightforward (although we did have to shut off the computer for the weekend). However, there were several windows and the back door that required taping, and that got pretty time-consuming after a while.

Look at me paint!!

But, despite the late hours we put in, it all seemed to work out for the best.

Nice clean lines!!

Besides, check out the sweet ball of used tape we got to toss around afterwards!

After the painting was done, we gleefully destroyed the vertical blinds that had been hanging on the back door since we moved in. They kept out the sunshine well enough, but they were also horribly flimsy and awkward, falling down every time a kid ran into them (which was often) and almost every time we tried to open and close them. Now that we'd painted the walls, we could finally start putting up curtains...so bye-bye, blinds!!

We won't miss you one. Little. Bit.

Due to our budget being tighter than anticipated this spring, we are going to add curtains slowly; perhaps once a month or so, until all the windows are covered. We started with the back door:

After getting these curtains home, we had to admit to ourselves that they weren't the prettiest curtains ever. However, we still liked them for a few reasons: 1. They were reasonably priced; 2. They were utilitarian, which will be useful in a high-traffic area like our kitchen; 3. They have a matching valance that we'll buy later to put in our kitchen sink window; and (most important) 4. They are black-backed curtains, specifically designed to keep out the sun! In a room that faces toward the sun for the majority of the day, that will be very helpful at reducing glare on the television and keeping the kitchen a little cooler.

Behold the final results!

We'll add pictures of the new curtains as we obtain them. Still, not bad for a weekend's worth of work!