*Painting your own house is great! Once it's done.*

When my father-in-law said he'd help us paint our house, I figured that meant it wasn't a hard task. I mean, if we can do it ourselves, it must be super doable, right? Wrong.

We painted our house ourselves and it took a long time

Our little yellow house wasn't perfect when we bought her in 2009, and her paint job was well-worn by the time we decided we needed to paint. Both my husband and I own our own businesses, and we are in a saving money season verses a spending tons of money season, so when my sweet father-in-law offered to help us paint our house, we said yes! It took us a whole year to follow through because we needed clear, good-weathered weekends during a time of year it was comfortable to be outside. The year we became parents was not that year.

August 2016, we finally set the date. We thought it would take a couple weekends. It ended up taking six weekends, not all in a row. Just remember if you dare to do this, there is a lot of prep work–fixing trim, caulking, power-washing, and clearing branches that touch the house were some things we hadn't accounted for, but were extremely important for a quality finished product.

We are people who enjoy relaxing and who have minimal spare time (so normal people), so it was a lot of work to jazz ourselves up enough to use our weekends to do manual labor. But we did it! We did it! And we saved thousands.

We had some quotes for $4,000 and up. If you decide to hire it out, know that I'm certain you get what you pay for, so don't just go cheap, check work and references. And respect the person doing it because damn.

The best part about all my whining above is that I probably only spent a day or two doing my part, while my husband and his dad did 90% of the work. Thanks guys for being so go-gettery!

From yellow to sea-foam green, the color story of our home

I loved our yellow. It was happy and pretty. We thought about going yellow again, but decided we wanted something new. We were leaning towards white. It seemed safe. I was taking a walk one day through our 1950s neighborhood of bungalows, and I noticed all the colors that were acceptable for our home's history. And it hit me! I'd be a total jerk if I painted my house white when I can legit get away with painting it sea-foam green. I mean who gets the chance to paint not one, but two buildings sea-foam green in their lifetime? Like me, and me.

It's a little brighter than I'd imagined. I think I'd pictured a more "water-color" version of what we got. That said, I love the finished product. I smile so much every time we pull up to our sea-foam home and my daughter Harriet says, "Hi House!"

So much joy. I'd recommend it if your home era supports it.

Recap on painting your own house

House painting is a long, laborious task. Think more than twice before doing it yourself. It's a big commitment of many weekends full of prep-time, priming, painting, trim painting, putting your gutters back, and more. That said, we saved a ton of money. And we feel accomplished and proud, even.

Finally, sea-foam green will bring you visual pleasure for the rest of your days if you put it on a building of any type. Just do it.

-Ashley Daly