Seventy Thirty-Six: Blood, Sweat, and Tears

The title pretty much sums up this next post...yes, there was a little of all 3. But, before I begin to explain the title, take a look at the freshly painted walls. If I do say so myself, I think they look pretty amazing!

MS Bedford Gray in the living room, dining room, and kitchen:

Behr's Creek Bend in the family room and master bedroom:

MS Bedford Gray continues in the entry and hallways:

MS Sharkey Gray in the guest room and office:

Behr's Creek Bend in the master bedroom:

What do you think? I couldn't be happier with how the paint colors turned out, and I'm pretty sure Vinni is in love with all of them (even though his frustration level was at an all time high during the process of deciding what colors to use).

Since the walls were all painted, the last steps were to paint the fireplace, heating vents, and window sills.

And so the painting began...

Vinni started on the window sills while I began tackling the brick fireplace.

Here he is annoyed that I'm always taking pictures and that there's never any of me in action.

Therefore, he captured my camera and proceeded to take pictures of me painting...

The finished product

Now for the explanation of the blood, sweat and tears...

My mom has an interior design company and has been buying and storing a bunch of furniture for Vinni and I, which is awesome! Over the last few months the amount of furniture has been building up and she's been running out of room to store it. So we decided to bring a few things over to the house to store in the basement and garage. She loaded her industrial cargo van full of tables, desks, art, etc. While we were unpacking the last few items, I went to grab a piece of art that was bungee corded to prevent falling over and apparently I didn't grab the cord firm enough, that it came loose and smacked me right in the face(!)...It hit me so hard that it split open my lip and I literally thought that my teeth had been knocked out of my head...thankfully they were still intact! Well, long story short, I was out of commission for the rest of the day and for a couple of days after my lip was so swollen that I looked like a "Who" person from Dr. Suess.

My alter ego from Horton Hears a Who:

All kidding aside, it was one of the most painful things I've experienced. Vinni attempted to take a picture of me right after it happened and obviously I wasn't too happy about that.

Here's a side view of what I looked like the rest of the day. I kept the ice on that baby for the next few hours in hopes that the swelling would go down, not knowing that the next day my lip would be even bigger!

Oh and here's one of our other helpers (Nick Pickens) sanding down a table that we're going paint white and put in the office.

While I was moping around the house with my traumatic injury, Vinni was taking action shots of our parents slaving away.

My parents helped put the finishing coats of paint on the heating vents.

Steve helped Vinni paint the window sills and put the finishing touches on the fireplace hearth so that we could paint it.

Here's Tina touching up the window sills and wall paint.

I am still amazed at how great the fireplace turned out! It doesn't even look like the same house.

We decided to paint the surface of the hearth the same color as the wall because (1) we had left over wall paint and (2) we knew that if we painted it white, it would show all of the soot and dirt from the fireplace.