14 months is long enough

Do you know what you were doing about 14 months ago? Most people probably don’t remember what particularly was happening in their lives. I mean you might remember some big things but nothing really specific. Well, I remember specifically what we were doing in the Martinez house 14 months ago… preparing to paint nearly the entire 1st floor of our house after the remodel of our kitchen. Why do I remember this so clearly you might wonder? Well I remember this event so vividly because I have been reminded of it EVERYDAY for the past 14 months.

As almost everyone does before they paint, we had to take down everything off the walls. I said “almost everyone” because I know someone who painted around their pictures because they were too lazy to take them down, sounds like more work to leave them up if you ask me. Anyways, 14 months ago, the painters came while Kaylee and I were out of town and it was such a nice treat to come home to a freshly painted house. I was so happy with the new colors we chose and the walls had no more stains or marks on them. But the pictures and everything we took off the walls sat in piles on the floor in various rooms of our house for days and weeks and months. Finally my mom and I decided to hang the only picture we could manage, which was a wedding picture. And until now that was the ONLY THING on our living room walls. I begged, bugged, and bribed Marcus for 14 months to hang the ginormous pictures back onto our bare wall. He managed to avoid this task for 14 LONG MONTHS! And each day I had to look at that huge bare wall! Finally I was fed up with it so I decided to hang them myself. I enlisted the help of a dear friend of mine, Bethany. God Bless Her! She came over yesterday and helped with the daunting task of hanging 2 - 21 pound pictures on the wall. As if that were not enough, they were to be hung on wire hangers, which if you know anything about picture hanging no two wires are the same length. That was the problem the last time we hung those 2 stupid pictures, we had 42 holes in the wall to find the studs then when we finally hit the stud and stepped back to look at the pictures we realized that they were about ¼ inch off. And man was it ever noticeable. I cant count the number of people who walked into our house and actually said “you know your pictures are crooked?” I almost put a sign on them that said “I know these are crooked, but I am not fixing them!” So back to yesterday, I had measured the difference in the 2 wire hangers and Bethany helped decide how far off the ground and how far apart they needed to be to be visually pleasing. We measured, leveled (which isn’t easy when the wall isn’t straight), and hammered. BAM!!! I hit the stud the 1st time on both pictures! I was so proud of our work. And when we stepped back to look they were hung PERFECTLY STRAIGHT!!! Then we had to adjust the couch, move the floor lamp, remove the fake tree that had been bugging the crap out of Marcus, turn the end table, and add a table lamp that had been in a closet for years. It looks like a brand new room! It still has that “something missing” feeling, but I am working on that. I have an idea of what I want it is just finding it now. I was so proud of our work that I decided to take some pictures to show you.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention I hung the 3 pictures of Kaylee (her 1 year portraits) too. I hung the big one by myself last week, but then asked Bethany to help me with the placement of the 2 smaller ones. So at least it only took me 4 months to get those on the walls. I will add that I picked the frames and mats out all by myself. Marcus and I had gone looking for frames for those pictures at least 3 times and never found anything that we well in love with so we just never put them up. I wanted to get them up before too much time had past, so I took matters into my own hands.

I really feel like we transformed our house by adding those pictures to the walls!

I can’t wait for you all to come and see our

NEW LIVING ROOM!

Katie you think you can get your "Bob Vila" to come give my husband a few tips?

Thank you Bethany for helping me!!!