Designed to Sell - Part One

In light of the fact that less than a year from now we will be putting our house on the market in preparation for our move to Lincoln, we've been taking stock of our little home sweet home over the last few weeks, making a master list of things that we feel need to be fixed/improved/installed (hello, basement ceiling!) before we're ready to sell.

And we've decided to start knocking items off that list as soon as possible. Partly because we want the improvements done so that we can actually enjoy the fruits of our labor before we have to give up the house, and partly because it's winter, and I'm itching for a project or twelve. I'm pretty sure it's genetic, this desperate craving to always be in the midst of some household renovation, to not feel completely satisfied unless up to the elbows in paint or spackle or sawdust, to get insanely excited at the prospect of a project. Seriously, I really honestly cannot remember a time in my life that my parents have not been renovating something, whether it's been a house or a car or a piece of property. Right now it's a house. So see? I don't really have a choice. It's in the blood. Luckily, Todd's pretty handy and more than willing (usually) to tackle anything I might suggest. And whatever he can't handle, my dad can, as he happens to be the handiest dad ever!

So. First project up was painting our living room/entryway.

We've been slowly neutralizing our house over the last few months, painting first the bathrooms and then the bedrooms various shades of taupe. Buyers love neutral shades, right? This has made a HUGE improvement over the red, orange, and puke brown that were in those rooms to begin with. I'm always asking myself why (WHY!) we ever thought those colors in particular would be good choices to cover our walls. And how did we live with them for five years before making a change? Yikes!

Here's the Before:

Our walls up until a few days ago have been a deep yellow mustardy color. But not mustard yellow in a good way. Mustard yellow gone way, way wrong. A yellow so hideous that I am pretty sure it has been causing me to go slowly crazy over the last few years, an idea that causes Todd much laughter, but I am positive is true.

Here's the After:

It didn't turn out too bad. I didn't particularly care for the shade at first, I must admit. This taupe is the exact same color that we used in our basement, and we love it down there, but for some reason, on our upstairs walls it looked like it had too much gray in it. Too much gray for our yellow-based decor. For a while I wondered if maybe we had made an even graver mistake using this taupe than we had with the yellow. However, with just a few accessory changes, our living room looks much, much better, and the color is growing on me. I can't get over how light and bright our house looks now! Unfortunately, all that lightness and brightness makes our kitchen, which we have not painted yet, look extremely, well...yellow. Alas, the kitchen, our last painting frontier, is a bit farther down on our list due to the fact that there is a lot of work besides painting that needs to be done in there. I only want to have to move the appliances once!

Part Two: Crown molding in the girls' bedroom