Moving into our first home

I was reading an article about home improvement at Paid Twice, and thought I'd write about one of our stories to see if it is good enough to win a cordless drill from Rather Be Shopping's site.

Back when Matt & I bought our first house, it wasn't so much a fixer upper, it was more a "help, this crazy middle class drug dealer left this house trashed" kind of deal! Oh how I remember going into that house and Matt and my FIL being able to see beyond the trash and burnt orange carpet, but me? Not so much! Anyway, after an unreal closing situation (remember, drug dealer), we needed to get in there and clean and paint.

My dear sweet husband is the perfectionist in our house, and at that time, he and his friends were still spending ample amounts of time painting what Nadine had termed "guys". Where's Dad? He's painting "guys" with Chester. Oh finding this picture on Flickr just brought back so many memories!

Detalle Miniatura Dungeons & Dragons
Originally uploaded by veneminis

So who better to help out painting than friends who spend hours using tiny paint brushes to paint little Dungeons & Dragons minatures? I think we had both taken off a week from work to get this house clean. The house had a oil furnace and the house was covered in gunk from that furnace. Someone recommended using Kilz on the walls because they were plaster, not dry wall. So the first few days we painted with Kilz. Then came time to really paint. By this time, I was getting antsy because we didn't have much time left. Some of the friends helping us out weren't up to par in the painting arena (obviously not the friends he painted "guys" with), so he would spend his time going over what everyone had already done. We had like 2 days of vacation left and we still had the 3 bedrooms upstairs to finish. I remember he and I getting into a fight because he was expertly edging the walls in one of the bedrooms and I was so mad because it was taking him so long! I yelled "We're never going to get this finished with you painting it like it's a guy" and slammed the door on him and threw a broom at the door.

He actually got it all finished in time and had left all the color choices up to me. He's really one amazing guy! Oh and all those pastel colors never messed with his "manlyhood"!