We put some new lights in our house this past couple of weeks in our quest to replace everything gold. A friend of mine just built a new house and his wife got a good deal on some nice new lights that they decided to put in. He gave us a good deal on some of his old lights (which had only been used for a couple weeks). We purchased some closet lights and a couple of dome lights from him. A couple of the closet lights are 2-bulb lights and the others are single bulb. The dome lights are 3-bulb lights. We still have a few more lights to replace, but most of them are done now. We want to put ceiling fans in the bedrooms and want to get a new kitchen light as well.

We also bought a new light at IKEA for our dining room called the KRYSSBO Pendant lamp. It is unique and we really like it. It has 7 halogen bulbs and gives off a good amount of light, but not as much as the old light. It was really easy to install and put together.

Today was a very productive day. We even had a couple people come and help us this evening! Jodi’s brother, Jake, came and helped me paint most of the evening. He did the corners and other brush work while I did the rolling. Jodi’s cousin, Lindsey, came and helped out for a couple hours and cleaned all of the windows and screens. She even cleaned the outside of the windows on the first floor! The screens were really dirty, they look so much better!

Jake and I painted the two extra bedrooms. The paint didn’t seem to go on as nicely as the first floor. The original paint in the bedrooms seemed really cheap and thin, it was different than what was on the main floor. We are hopeful that a second coat will add a little more to it and help give it some more quality and coverage. It seemed too like the paint just got soaked up a lot more than downstairs, I seemed to be going through it pretty quick. So far we have gone through 3 gallons of paint, went through about a whole gallon just today.

After Jake left, Jodi and I did one of the walls in the master bedroom. I think she was just really jealous that she didn’t get to paint all evening so she wanted a turn! :) Jodi worked on cleaning out the kitchen most of the evening, she cleaned out the cupboards and cleaned the oven. The oven didn’t show much progress even after all the time she spent on it, it is just really really dirty. She also cleaned one of the blinds, they are also pretty dirty. We are probably going to replace some of the blinds before too long, some are just really bad. Jodi also got everything else taped and ready for a second coat of paint.

It was so helpful and nice that Jake and Lindsey came and helped out, it let us get a lot more done than we had thought we would. They are great! We were going to take them out to dinner to show our thanks, but only Jake made it to that, Lindsey left just before we were going to go, so we still owe her dinner!

Today was our first day painting. We started off with a little more finishing work on the spackle and taping. Then we pulled out the paint brushes, rollers and paint. We decided to start in the upstairs hall area since that would be a good spot to get in to the swing of things since it won’t be seen as much as the front room. It looks us a few minutes to figure out what we were doing, but once we got going we seemed to be moving pretty well. We finished the upstairs hall area and the walls around the stairs on the main floor. We didn’t get the three really high walls yet in the stair area, those are going to be rather tricky. We’ve only used about a half gallon of paint so far.

Tomorrow we plan to finish the front room and get the bedrooms prepped, hopefully we’ll even be done with the carpeted areas by the first of next week. So far it looks like we won’t need to do a second coat, hopefully that is still the case after it dries.