Facing My Fears...

When my husband, Craig, and I first walked through our current house, I was sure I could transform every space.  I don't know if he believed me but we put in an offer anyway.  A low offer.  Not really expecting them to accept.  We had put in offers on other houses with no luck.  We weren't trying to be rude but we only looked at fixer uppers and we knew what it would take to bring them up to date.  We needed a house that would be big enough for our family of six, and ugly enough to give me something to do.  And we needed to get a good deal.  So we put in an offer.  And they accepted.  It was kind of surprising.

But back to that first walk through.  I told Craig that I would take all of the wallpaper down and paint every square inch by myself.  Except for the foyer.  We would hire a painter to do the foyer.  There was no way I could get to the top of a two story foyer.  And we agreed that when we got to that part of the remodel, we would hire a painter.

Oh I know - not much there that needs changing but I can't help myself.  Anyway, we're ready to tackle this space now.  And we contacted a painter - who sent us an estimate for $1650 to paint the foyer (which does include trim).  Um no thanks.  So I started stripping the paper on the first floor a while back -

And this weekend, Craig rented scaffolding so we could get to the higher section.  Yea! (can you sense the sarcasm there?)-

At this point, I was already shaking a little.  My fear of heights was kicking in.

Even my cat, Shadow, was trying to get in on the action.  I took a deep breath and thought "I can handle this."  It didn't look too bad.  But then I found out that was only the first level.  Ugh.

Ok.  That's just scary.  Yikes.  I kept reminding myself how much money we were saving (the scaffolding cost $100 for the week - which will include two weekends.  Somehow Craig talked them into that perk.).  So here we go...