Edit to add: AHHH sorry!!! I “posted” this on Tuesday but the way this wordpress blog is set up I have to remember to categorize the post as “blog” or it doesn’t show up in the blog. Annoying, indeed. Anyway sorry sorry sorry! I’ll be posting the Valentine’s today (Friday Feb. 5) so check back later!

I think it was Confucius who said

Let he who watches renovation shows on TV not forget the power of time elapsed photography and secret crews who have actual renovation knowledge. For if you do, you will spend 3 days of insanity paintin’ trim on uneven walls, dawg.

Oh how Confucius loves to do his Randy Jackson impression! And, yes, I have gone completely insane. HAHAHAHA! HA! I have indeed been painting my living room for the past 3 days and this morning had to bring Michael to the airport at 5 am so there is a whole new lack of sleep angle and over-caffeination angle that is now playing itself out.

Here are some NEVER BEFORE SEEN painting progress photos (they’re not even on facebook- that is how fresh these are)

(This is the before and by “before” I mean WAY before- this is a shot from the series I took when we did our first walk through of the house)

And here is a current progress shot

The lighting isn’t great at the moment but it does look a lot better than it did before. The walls were a slight off white and the trim was a blah cream and I think the gray is pretty slick. The furniture is all pushed towards the center of the room (away from the walls) which is why it looks cramped. That and the fact our furniture is too large in general but we’re taking baby steps.

A friend sent me this article from Apartment Therapy about the “Finding the Perfect Gray” but then I read this article from humblehappenings after googling Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl and now, looking back, apparently just skimmed it because we went with Stonington Gray. We had also tried Silver Fox for those who have come to this page after googling the color names and it was very brownish. Once it dried it was a little more appealing but just not for us.

We also have 6 fugly sconces littered about the living room (as can be see on the left hand side of the before pic) which is just too expensive to replace all of them (and makes it living room look kind of hotel-y) but these did make me think about keeping them for a couple minutes: LightsUp!

I love it every time I see it but we have too many sconces. We are opting for floor lamps which they make too so YAY!

I’m also looking into Customizing Some Roman Shades to get rid of the vertical blinds.

Ok so none of this is wedding-y or paper-y BUT the insanity has brought some good-for-you just not good-for-you-that-is-already-done-by-Tuesday. I am in the process of making some awesome FREE musically inspired Valentine’s Day cards! They will be print and cut yourself UNLESS you can get me Season 2 of True Blood on DVD then I will make them for you, spritz them with perfume, forge your signature and mail them to your loved ones. So… yeah. Keep that in mind.