New Year's Eve Big "To-Do"

Yup, this is where we spent most of New Year's Eve- shuffling between Home Depot for paint and Lowe's for the crown molding.

There's just so many choices out there for color and finish that it's mind-boggling. I did a search on good paint brands after we found out the prohibitive cost ($40+/gallon) for our painter's recommended paint brands (e.g. Dunn Edwards, Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams).

Consumer Report highly recommended Behr Premium, which is Home Depot's house brand. At $23 per gallon, and Consumer Report in its corner, Behr seemed like a very good choice (crossing fingers).

On to the crown molding...

we went back and forth between Home Depot and Lowe's to compare prices and design. In the end, Lowe's had much better selection in terms of price, design, and length (we needed 21 12ft rods).

Added to that- and unbeknown to us at the time, Lowe's was running a special:

Spend $60 on your purchase, get a $10 off coupon on your next visit- no minimum purchase required. SCORE!!!!!

Since we hadn't known about this promo until after we paid for the molding and got our receipt, Steve and I "returned" the molding and paid for them in $60 increments, so that we can accumulate the $10 coupons for each batch. We ended up with five $10 coupons. I don't think the store manager was very pleased with our diligence. Hahaha....

And here's how the molding looked like tethered together in Steve's car as we drove it to the house:



And this is how we looked at 11p.m. after hauling 2 five gallon paint buckets, 7 one gallon paint cans, 50lbs of wood 25 miles on surface streets during New Year's Eve. Oh, and I forgot, Steve also had to get our yet-unacquainted neighbor to remove his car from our driveway (yes, smack in the middle!) after they left it there while they did housework.




All in a day's work....

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S, EVERYONE!!!!