Wednesday, October 5, 2016

A house, painted.

A picture of our house pre-purchase. Even before we made an offer on it, I really wanted to give it a face lift. The colors just didn't seem to work. And while I don't know if we really nailed the new color or not, I know that at least it's an improvement :)

Unfortunately, the week prior to paint day was absolutely horrendous.  A crew of volunteers was scheduled to do the prep work the weekend before (which had been a huge relief to us as there was SO SO much peeling paint to be scraped and sanded), but it was as if they too realized what hard work it would be and decided to just not do it.  Instead things were done which we had to turn around and spend time un-doing.  Unbelievably disappointing, frustrating and incredibly stressful. 

We didn't want the paint we'd purchased to be applied to unprepped surfaces so we spent the week frantically completing the prep ourselves -- at all hours of the day and into the night. We had friends from our small group come help and Jason's parents came down for a day as well. Collectively, we must have put over 70 hours into it just during that week. Thankfully, it was also Jason's first week of school so he did not have much homework yet and no long lab classes, and his student job hadn't started yet ... so he had more time that he would the rest of the year. It felt a bit like we were being tortured, but we got it done.


 
Over 150 volunteers worked on our house. The day before paint day, we had the U of I track team helping us finish the prep work and on paint day volunteers came in groups of 20-30 for a couple hours each; both groups were diligent, hard workers with great attitudes. In spite of the incredible stress from the week before, we continue feel overwhelming grateful to the students who spent their time making our home look a little prettier. 



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