The Good Life on a Budget

• Posted by JvW on November 3rd, 2009 filed in House

If you follow me on Twitter (and if not, then follow me!), you would have seen a tweet this weekend about the last day of painting. I am excited that all of the painting renovations are complete!

Well, kinda.

We started this project of painting all the trim in our house in June. Of 2008. That’s right, we’ve been painting for a year and a half. When we started, I thought we would complete the project in a weekend.

It makes me want to go back in time and punch myself for being so stupid.

When I say that we are done painting, I mean exactly that. We will not be painting anymore. It has sucked up too much of our time and effort. We have reached the point where we personally are not going to paint anymore. We are going to hire painters to finish the job.

I know this sounds like the least frugal thing we could do. It’s going to cost us around $1400 to finish the trim, paint the bathroom walls and paint the entryway and stairs. If we painted it ourselves, the materials would cost less than $100.

At this point, though, we are sick to death of painting. We have painted every free weekend for 18 months. Everything else has been put off. We have a long list of projects that have been postponed as we wanted to complete the painting first. The worst part is, we couldn’t just leave half of the trim painted in the house and the other half the old color. It has to be finished.

The decision to hire painters has lifted a huge weight off our shoulders. I am so happy to spend this money. At the end of the day, it is definitely worth it to us. I’m glad we did a lot of the painting ourselves, and I’m glad we’re outsourcing the rest.

We gathered a few quotes and chose the best one. He’s coming in tomorrow to get started. The project that has taken us a year and a half should be completed in about a week!