Tuesday, October 28, 2008

We're having a party-

QUICK, Clean the house!!! Turns out cleaning the ENTIRE house is not such a quick task!

Since we moved in last December, various people have asked us to have a gathering of some sort so they could see the inside of the house. We've talked about it, but never decided it was the right time until about the 1st of October. We both love Halloween, and it's fun to decorate for it, so we decided it was as good of a time as any to throw a party. The easy part: Sending out the invitations! The hard part: Cleaning and getting everything ready!

Though I'm sure there are many projects we could have completed before we had this little shindig, the only major thing we needed to do was paint the dining room. Paint color was a decision about 10 months in the making. Our dining room at our old house was red and we loved it. We got some red paint samples and painted big splotches on the wall, but it really didn't compliment the three different colors of woodwork in the dining room (four if you count the painted crown molding). I was bummed and stuck of what to do, so it got shoved to the back burner and we ignored the bright red shapes in the dining room for months.

One day at an open house, I had an unusual number of comments on the paint color of the living/dining room in the house. So many, actually, that I had to ask the owner what the color was. Applesauce Cake, she said. She actually picked it out for her parent's farm house that has lots of oak woodwork. Bingo!! Maybe Applesauce Cake would work in my oak-filled room! Turned out that we loved the color, so we got our standard gallon and a quart that it takes to paint these rooms.

When it came time to paint, I couldn't find my trim cup, so I just held on to the quart and went around the room. I opened up the gallon to do the rolling, put some on the wall and thought "That doesn't quite look right... It must just be because it's wet." It wasn't until I was done rolling the first coat and poured the remainder of the quart into the gallon that I discovered I was right. They were two totally different colors! (see picture) UGH! So the paint went back to Menards, turns out the formulas were right, somehow the machine got some extra red color in the gallon and threw it off. Two new cans of correctly-colored paint later, I changed the walls back to the right color. Even though it took an extra trip to the store, we're really happy with the color and got lots of compliments on it.

Not having anything else major to do to get ready for the party, we set our sights on cleaning. Well, I did... Chris kept telling me we had plenty of time to get everything done. (He did admit, after the fact, that he had no idea how long everything would take, hahaha!) One of our friends suggested we get some plastic tubs, go from room to room and throw everything that doesn't belong in to the tub and hide it until after the party. Though that sounded like a tempting idea, we didn't resort to the plastic tubs :) Luckily, Chris was able to take the day of the party off work and we did get everything done in time. Good thing too- there were so many people here, there wasn't room for our crap laying all over the place! ;)

So what have we learned?
1. If you're using more than one can of paint in a room, make sure they are the same color before you waste hours painting!
2. When you have a big house, it's a brilliant idea to have a cleaning schedule. It's much easier to clean one room a day than it is to clean an entire house at the last minute! Either that or get rich and hire Merry Maids...
3. Parties are fun, this is definitely a party house!

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