Paint ALL the walls!

When we said we were re-doing the entire inside of our new house, we meant it.  When we're done with this baby, not a single wall nor ceiling nor door will be the same color as it was when we purchased the house.  I've got a pretty good jump on painting most of the house already, but there's still quite a bit to do.

Some of our friends came over one night in the first days of our housework and helped to prime all of the non-white walls.  That made a huge difference and really made it easier for me to paint most everything else by myself.  Luckily, I've been spending a bit of extra cash for the good, thick paint and we haven't had to use more than one coat on most anything.  The darker colors (like the red we're using in the living room) needed two coats, but otherwise it's been pretty smooth sailing.  Then one of my old field school students came to visit ABQ for a few days with three of his friends, and we let them crash at our old house in exchange for some help painting.  So in the span of only about 3 hours, we got two rooms painted!  That was pretty awesome.

I spent more than a week painting the kitchen cabinets, and THAT was a doozy.  But I'll save that for a different post in itself.  Also, all of the walls in our house are textured.  Textured walls look nice, but damn are they a pain to paint.  Especially the ceilings.  Have you ever tried to paint a textured ceiling in a 350+sqft room, by yourself, in poor lighting?  It's a terrible idea!  My arms were aching, my neck was sore, and I still had to go back the next day and paint over a bunch of spots where the texture prevented the roller from covering everything.  But it looks good now, and that's what matters.  My kitchen and bathroom are no longer pink.  That's all that matters.

I plan to post before and after photos of all of the rooms once they get finished, so you will be able to see all of the colors then.  You'll just have to trust me that they look damn good.  We're pretty good at picking out awesome colors, if I do say so myself.

Also, I made the amazing discovery that the little 49-cent paint tools from the hardware store can double as bottle openers!  GENIUS.