The first problem I needed to take care of was the color of the house, the majority of the interior was painted in extremely bright (I would say ugly) colors, mostly pumpkin orange. I’ve done some small paint jobs before but nothing as big as this. I thought it would be relatively easy and if I worked hard I could get it done in a weekend. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks, and more expensive than I thought. The first mistake I made is not spending enough time on the prep work. Taping off the ceiling and covering the floors did not go as smoothly as I thought so I started cutting corners. The hardest part of the job was painting the ceilings, I wanted all of the ceilings to be white which is way harder than painting the ceiling and walls the same color. 

The painting ended up taking about 2 months, mostly b/c I was so frustrated with how hard it was that I didn’t work on it for days at a time. Because of my sloppy prep work I got the wall paint on the ceiling in some spots and dripped a lot of paint on the floors, even with a drop-cloth down. Another part of the job that was harder than I expected was cleaning the brushes and rollers, I ended up buying about 25 rollers and 15 brushes adding to the already expensive job. All told I spent about $1,500 which is at least 50% cheaper than a professional painter would have charged. If I had the chance again I would still do it myself, although I would go about it completely differently. Here is a list of rules that I would recommend following if you are going to do a large paint job by yourself:

1. Take the time to completely prep the room, if you tape off the walls or ceiling make sure the tape line is straight, you will probably need to use multiple pieces of tape. Make sure the entire floor is covered by a thick drop-cloth, tape the floors around the walls.
2. Use quality paint brushes and rollers, buy something to clean the brush with.
3. Finish each room completely (including cleanup) before moving to the next room.
4. Buy extras of everything, the store is always closed when you need more of something.
5. Take your time, rushing only leads to mistakes which take more time to fix.

I will post next week about my attempt to refinish hardwood floors.