How to be the worst person in the world: invite all your friends to a painting party and then not come.

I was all, “Lol, jk guys. I’m sick. You can still come and paint Jill’s living room though.”

I didn’t mean to be a terrible person, but in what was the most awful timing of my life, I got completely laid-out-sick and couldn’t get off the couch the day of the painting party Erin and I had organized for Jill’s surprise makeover. It was awful: flu-like symptoms, topped with massive waves of guilt for being horrible.

I basically called in sick to life. My mom came to take the kids so I could lay around moaning and wishing I was never born, and she snapped this picture of Weston, because when I get sick, the kids start to look a little homeless. (Note the collar tucked inside the shirt, shoes on the wrong feet, solid understanding of color theory and pattern-matching.)

Poor buddy. Why doesn’t he have a mom who will dress him like a proper person? (I do choose my battles carefully on the clothing front though. Mila’s getting really into dressing herself, and also wearing her brother’s clothes, which I think is hilarious and awesome.)

Nice abs, babe. She specializes in creative blends of different styles, unexpected accessories and wearing underpants on top of pants. I would keep my kids at this exact age for all time if I could.

How’d you get me talking about this? Oh yeah — the painting party.

Remember, this is Jill’s dark cave-like living room, with old wallpaper and grolive (new word for gray-olive) trim.

The bookshelves were an orangey-brown pine which Jill hated.

The wallpaper was actually probably really nice originally – it was a diamond-textured grasscloth – but it was old and stained, and just needed a refresh. Jill’s been dying to paint it for a LONG time, but knew it’d be a ton of work.

Yes – we decided to paint right over the wallpaper, with the permission of her mother-in-law who owns the house. We loved the texture and pattern of the grasscloth, plus the wallpaper had been there for a long time and nobody wanted to venture beneath it and open that pandora’s box.

So a bunch of Jill’s friends who love her and were excited to do this for her, came and painted the room one night.

Except me, because unexplainable summertime influenza/black heart.

But look how much brighter already!

The heavens have opened and light is pouring through in rivers of glory!

We used a color called “Daydream Haze” for the walls. It’s a color that Jill used in her master bedroom and LOVES, so it was a safe bet. To lighten it up a little bit, we had it mixed at half-strength. (If you really love the hue of a paint color but wish it was a little lighter, you can ask the person at the paint counter to mix it at half-strength. They basically just put in half the color, so it’s exactly the same, but whiter, if that makes sense.) The trim is called “Ivory Dust.”

In a perfect world, we would’ve painted her ceiling too, but if you started painting it here, you would’ve had to repaint the whole downstairs and we had one week and $500, so it didn’t happen.

Jill had been talking about white-washing the stone on her fireplace because she didn’t like it, but once we painted the bookshelves white, the fireplace turned amazing.


(Sorry for the terrible night-time photo!)

We also got them a new couch!!
And not just any couch — the most amazing couch anyone has ever bought on craigslist for under $100. It was listed for $270 and I talked the guy down to $100. (I KNOW.) One hundred tiny dollars for this gorgeous sofa that I kind of wanted to keep for myself – see? Black heart – but am planning to love forever from a distance. Here it is in this messy garage-whose-owner-shall-not-be-named with the pair of chairs we also bought:

The chairs were $70 for the pair. They’re little cane chairs which had really nice light blue upholstery and a medium-toned wood. We didn’t do a thing to them.

I really liked how the arms of the chairs and the arms of the sofa mimic each other’s shape. See that? Fancy, right?

In the last post I showed you the layout we landed on, so we bought the sofa and the chairs intending to face them toward each other:

Okay, so ready to see this all come together?

Next post, should we do a reveal? What do you think?