Just a little paint fumes

During a particularly beautiful fall weekend*, we took on the somewhat daunting task of painting. I think it started as a distraction during the Michigan football game and morphed into an all-on paint assault in the apartment. 

The funny thing about painting is that we are the blind leading the blind. I had done some painting as a kid with my Dad and on Habitat homes... but nothing that mattered as much as my own living space. While my Dad was helpful in giving tips, we turned, as usual, to the internet for painting research. Loaded with checklists and to-dos from Real Simple's website, we took a deep breath and dipped our brushes into the paint. 

After only a slight amount of bickering (did you know that painting can be hard on a marriage??), we completed an accent wall in the living room. It's now a lovely Martha Stewart shade of "sueded leather". Really, it's brown. Which is much better than the dingy beige that is EVERYWHERE in this place. 

The worst part about the whole ordeal was watching the paint dry. As we sat on the couch, we began to notice all the places we missed. Thankfully, the matte paint was forgiving when we went over the bare patches the next morning. 

Steve, having gotten the painting bug, started in on the bathroom at 5 pm last night. I'm never sure that starting to paint at 5 pm is a good idea... But, by 10 pm we had an almost-painted bathroom in glossy "pale sapphire 1." While pale sapphire 1 didn't totally live up to my expectations of the color (i was hoping for more lavender, less baby blue), it is another lovely paint job. So what if you can tell we're beginners? The splotches of dripping paint give it character :) And it's a rental. 

I think Steve summed it up best when he said "now it looks like somebody lives here." Yay! 

* Don't worry, we also went to the Dexter Cider Mill, took a drive to see the fall colors along the Huron River, and hiked through the Arb on campus with camera in tow.