99 gallons of mud on the wall...99 gallons of mud...

Though I’m well known for my ability to create cuteness and crafts (as well as my humbleness), I have decided that some DIY house projects are just not for us. For those that don’t know DIY is the acronym for Do it Yourself. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that Eddie and I should do things for ourselves…you know make huge efforts to create an environment in which every single thing in McNest hasn’t been mass produced in an Asian country or have been completed by experts and professionals that charge us so much money that we have to have our lives mortaged to the bank for an eternity. Case in point - we painted our own room. Here's an after of the Green Room taken last nite (I learned how to use the timer on the camera to get us both in the shot). We definitely want our company to feel that personal touch through out the house. I just don’t want that personal touch to be like painted over duct tape holding the sheetrock up.

I know that a number of people in the world (me included) find it incredibly satisfying to create things for themselves. I agree that it’s absolutely ridiculous to spend money on say…a professional curtain hanger when I feel completely confident to like hang them up on my own. I am pretty sure that if I have any issues hanging blinds or something I can look up a tutorial on YouTube to help me. With Cheryl’s help, Eddie hung the drywall (good job babe!) and decided to start taping, mudding, and sanding. None of these tasks are in my skill set and since my skill set abilities are questionable anyways, I stuck to taking pictures of the progress (I did it for you…dear friends…for you).

So here we are…living on the edge…and daring to do it ourselves! There totally are benefits to it … working to reach the shared goal of creating a place that feels like home… having the same focus…getting outside our comfort zones…being proud of what we can do together…saving a dollar. One little problem though… we’re sometimes not very good at knowing our own limits. And though we don’t want to hire out when we can hire in… I think the time has come to DISE – or Do it Someone Else. While we remain tough and committed to other projects, we have decided to have Someone Else do our drywall and sheetrock stuff. Tonight we meet Someone Else…and hopefully I won’t have to sell a kidney to pay him for his drywall services.

For serious renovators like us…this definitely wasn’t an easy decision. There are two goals that all renovators (and yes I speak for renovators across America) strive for: to do good work and to do that work quickly. I’m thinking we didn’t really come all that close on this project. When you look at the things we want for McNest… namely walls that will stand… and walls that are smooth and ready to be painted and beautiful…(and maybe a swimming pool one day…oh and granite countertops) it’s in everyone’s best interest. Though I do have serious doubts about the whole drywall thing in general. Who knew that the walls of our homes are only slightly more substantial than a hunk of chalk! I feel like I’m going to be tiptoeing around the house as it is in order not to fall into said walls and knock our bedroom down or something.

Honestly…it’s powdered rock people. You can cut it with a box cutter (which I have in a lovely flowery print along with matching hammer, screwdriver, tape measure and other tool thing in a lovely set purchased at Belk – thanks mom!) At any rate, we’ll still steady work on the other tasks in this whole renovating process… there are many other sundry jobs that we will try out 24 different methods for doing and make multiple trips to Lowe’s for each one of these projects, all the while still enjoying that magical feeling of our wallets emptying. We’ll let you know how the meeting with Someone Else goes.