Some Husbands Give Flowers....

Mine gives me the gift of room makeovers.

I've basically redefined the definition of stretched too thin for the last month and one thing adding to the stress is the list of projects we are quickly trying to finish at the house. Since I usually am the painter, when I'm busy, rooms tend to stall and then very slowly finish up. The living room was a good example. We had finished the dining room just under a year ago and since then we knew what we wanted to do in the living room but didn't know when we would have the time to get it done. 

So you can imagine my major surprise when I walked in the door after my trip (I was in Iowa City if you couldn't tell from my awesome pic on Facebook)  this past week and saw this:

To bring you back, this is what things looked like at Christmas (and basically what it looked like when I left last Thursday minus some decorations)

And this is the last picture I took of the whole room.

In just three and a half days, Nate and our awesome friend Desiree completely transformed the room. This literally would have taken me months to do by myself.

This included:

- Priming and painting all the trim
- Installing board and batten
- Hiding all the TV cords in the wall
- Installing all the ceiling trim
- Painting the walls
- Reinstalling TV bracket, basket hooks and curtain rods

I can't get over how different the room looks and how much I love it. Nate didn't give on at all that he was working on this when we talked so it was a complete surprise, which is really hard to do with me. We still have a few small things that we want to do in this room (bookshelf between the two windows?) but all the big, time consuming things are now done!

Included in that list is something we have wanted to do since we moved in....

I'll give you all the info on our new gas fireplace in another post (including why it took so long to put in) but right now we are thoroughly enjoying this new addition.

So this is what happens when I leave Nate home alone. Can you believe how much the fireplace pops now??

Do you love it as much as I do?