However. And it's a big however. The previous owner, despite his wife's ravings about his carpenter capabilities, was not all that good at home repair. Or he was lazy. Or he was cheap. Or he was all of the above. My husband often refrains from expressing his mind when he finds just one more thing...
To give you a hint at his mindset - our drain field failed 6 months after we moved in and truth be told, we could have sued (and to this day there is still a part of us that wishes we had) because in the septic report there was one piece of paper he signed stating the company told him his drain field had an issue and needed major repair. He not only didn't share that information with us, he withheld that piece of paper until after we had moved in - and even then it was his realtor who shared it, not him. The realtor never did give us a reason for his not handing it over sooner. I think we never followed through with the suit because we believe we were foolish in not pushing for that paperwork (on the septic inspection) before signing. We asked for it, sure but didn't push the issue until we were in.
I am rabbit trailing in a BIG way today. Apparently stepping away from my blog for almost 4 months makes me chatty...
My point is that the drain field failure cost us a lot of money. A lot. Then, in the midst of that recovery, my husband was laid off from his job (twice) and we couldn't really put any money aside for home remodeling. Then, as we would get some money set aside for a project or two, something would go wrong (broken pipe under the house - more septic system issues - broken water main - broken kitchen pipe - dead outlet in the kitchen...) and we'd find some other cheap fix the previous owner had made (rather than doing it right... grrr..) and our money would go to a "need" not a "want."
Painting has been slow. To say the least. It took us 3 years of living in the house before we redid our bathroom (I can't even describe the hideousness that was there before) and our kitchen... Well. The back part of our house is very "cave like" I always say. It gets the morning sun only and the woods behind us holds very tall trees so even that morning sun is filtered and brief. The sun beats on the roof all afternoon which makes it quite warm in the summer but there are no windows on the roof so it's very dark. The kitchen was horrible. The previous owners had installed these green countertops and a few people have called them "pretty" but I have always flat out thought they were ugly. Not 1970's green ugly but pretty ugly. I've always hated them. The granite I fell in love with, though, is $64 a square foot and we have 36 sq. ft. of counter space. That whole money issue...
So, Aaron talked to me about painting our counters and I always blew the idea off because I could not, for the life of me, imagine liking something painted. Until I was hanging out two Saturdays ago watching a home improvement show (I do not recall which one!) and they painted the countertops of their client. Well, the client did the painting - they helped and featured the paint system.
That night I mentioned it to Aaron, we hopped online and found the company, checked out the different kit options and $89.70 later (safely ordered via PayPal), our paint kit was on its way. It showed up Thursday and over Labor Day weekend, Aaron painted. First I cleaned the counters (scrubbed 'em with an SOS pad - easy), then we taped them off then Aaron painted on the primer on Friday. That took 8 hours to dry and we had plans for Saturday so he painted Saturday night. Four hours for that to dry and again - plans on Sunday so Sunday night he painted the first layer of top coat, Monday night the second. Now we wait a few days for the paint to set before we start putting things back but... here is the before and after:
How happy with THIS do you think I am? Yes - the top picture was taken at night but that's with every light on in the kitchen. The second picture? Daylight only. In picture #1? Shadows have shadows... I can't believe how much brighter it is in the kitchen and how much better the room looks just by painting the counters.
Now...we're going to paint the walls and ditch the ugly wallpaper and I may even re-stain the cabinets. I think I could love a kitchen....
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