Home Improvement Before and Afters

 Basement Before-the color of the baseboard in that picture is the same color the entertainment center below used to be.

 Basement Before

 The entertainment center was painted Black Bean, which actually was more like Brown Bean.

 Worse than Before: I felt like I was standing in the Buckaroo Fan Club den. My school mascot colors were black and orange. Knockout Orange was definitely NOT the autumn-spice color I was going for. Standing in the basement with this color on was an attack on the senses and incited great waves of anxiety, nervousness, and paranoia. What made this even better was that Brannon hired two labor ready guys, Maury and Pablo to paint this awful color on. It took them 9 hours and I was sure that Maury was going to kill Pablo before the end of the day. Poor Pablo couldn't speak a lick of English and Maury was a know-it-all homeless guy with zero patience for poor painting tactics. I heard Maury tell Brannon that he had been arrested the night before for beating the crap out of another homeless guy. At one point I heard Maury start yelling at Pablo, and I feared that we would have a crime scene on our hands in the basement and that we would just have to sell the house and move away to forget the awful memories forever tied to the color orange. Thank goodness Brannon intervened and there was no crime committed in our basement besides that of the orange assault on our walls.

 This painting mishap occurred the weekend before Halloween and Brannon was leaving town on Monday, so I made him go to Sherwin Williams with me on a SUNDAY (I know, it was an EMERGENCY though!) and pick out a new color. Thank goodness my brother is a manager for Sherwin Williams and hooked us up with a major discount because this was a MAJORLY expensive mistake! I painted the entire 1st coat before Brannon got home on Halloween. Then we spent the next three nights painting until 2 in the morning. There is also a small bedroom that we painted the same color not pictured. We love the new color, called Drizzle. It feels very soothing and serene in our basement now and we have pretty much eliminated ALL traces of that dreadful orange.

 

 The weekend after Halloween we carpeted the three bedroom upstairs. I was tired of cold, creaky floors and we are absolutely LOVING it! Taj and Haivi spend a lot more time playing in their rooms now. Our rooms are SO much warmer now. We hope to carpet out basement too by the end of spring. It is amazing what new carpet and paint can do to update a home!