Good news! The painting is done!

First, another disclaimer (or something like that). Yes, my house is usually this messy, although in my defense, these were taken in the midst of "the sickness", so I had an excuse (THAT day, not all the other days, though!). By the way, those things next to the tv are known as "rabbit ears", for those of you with cable/satellite. And we are boycotting the '09 switch to HDtv and will be taking our $40 changeover credit to get the box and keep our non-HD set. Hey, we had the tv that Jared got for his 16th birthday in 1990 until a couple of years ago when we were given this one, so, hey, we're movin' on up!

Here is the living room BEFORE. The drapes and cornices came with the house and are OLD (house was built in '55). Also, the walls are as they were when we moved in TWO years ago...flat, white paint. Oh, with spackling OVER that. Yes, it was like that when we moved in, and YES, it has taken us TWO years to get around to painting it. Sad. But true.
These two are the dining room (open to the living room) BEFORE. Those are our Ruby pictures on the wall. And yes, that light fixture came with the house (although it's grown on us and I think I might keep it). These walls are in the same shape as the living room, flat, white, dirty walls. And old drapes (we'd already taken down this cornice, but it's the same as the living room)...

And...ta-da! Not as dramatic in pictures, but OH so much better in person. We did Porter's Neutral Beige in both rooms, with velvet white on the ceilings and molding. Yeah, who knew there was even crown molding up there? It was flat white like the walls. Now it's actually painted as trim! I'm still searching for window treatments, so we had to just put up the old drapes (since it was 9 degrees that night and our old windows are pretty drafty)...and I haven't put anything back on the walls, but I'm SO excited to have that done!And for the dining room...who knew we had a chair rail already there? Even though it's covered by the china cabinet, it looks SO much better! The pirates are not an intentional part of the decor. This is our only table, so it's gets LOTS of use!
I'm so excited to have this done, in case you can't tell! I know it's sad that I'm this excited about paint, but home improvement is a rare event in our household :-) Here's a sad fact: I had paint for these rooms bought back in June, until Jack spilled it on our kitchen floor in July. And guess what has NOT been replaced yet? That's right, our painted kitchen floor. But that's going to happen this week, so look for more exciting home improvement news from the Smallings!!