they're gone!

Finally, finally, finally my drywalling & painter friends are gone - well almost, there are still a few touch ups to be done. The past week has not been fun for us. We've been living trying to live in a white plaster dust covered home. It went ok for a while, but when the only bathroom got ripped apart, we packed our bags and ran to our home away from home here in Charlotte, the Drury Inn. Mia was thrilled to be back at her old stomping grounds and Ben & I were so ready to get off of our air mattress. But now it's Wednesday and we're back, but this house is still wrecked and I'm not exactly looking forward to putting it back into a semi-livable state.

There was that one little catastrophe with the living room floors, remember? So this morning the painter (the responsible party) brought by the guy who is going to fix them. Turns out it's going to be more than just sanding them down and throwing on a coat of poly. He's going to need to redo the whole room. Stain & 3 coats of poly. That's 4 days of not living in the living room. I know in the grand scheme of things another 4 days is nothing, but I am so seriously ready to begin making this place a home and not just a big empty house.

The other little speed bump that we hit is with color. For the most part, we I made good choices, but again the living room threw me for a loop. In a moment of weakness, I freaked at how white the white was going to be and ran out for a creamier color (Benjamin Moore's Mascarpone). The floors were covered and I couldn't see any warmth in the room and I got cold feet. But when the samples went up there was terrible lighting (with gray skies for days) and I just couldn't tell. We himmed and haawed for 2 days and finally it was time to decide, so as a compromise we added 20% white to the cream and just went with it. Just my luck the gray skies cleared the next day, the sun came out and I of course, HATED the cream. At that point we couldn't do anything about it, so it looks like we'll be repainting in there. Plus the guys didn't do the crown molding in black like I had wanted. Ben calls it a miscommunication. I call it, they forgot. Oops. So we have to go back and do it ourselves too. And maybe even the hallway too. It's a custom greige that is too blah for me. We'll most likely wait to do it though until we open up the staircase in the spring.

So without further adieu, here are some sneak peeks. I haven't taken any official "afters" yet. I've been waiting for this guy to arrive. Finally after months of missing the one that got stolen, it has finally been replaced! I apologize for the terrible quality of the photos below. The point & shoot that we replace is nothing like the quality of the one we lost, even though it's the exact same brand & a newer model. Ugh!