Ten months, in our new home, our first dream home, we have faced our own ups and downs. Renting was so much easier, especially when you air conditioning breaks down on a Saturday evening in the middle of a hot Texas summer. Frantic phone calls, two nights of sweating it out and a few thousands of dollars lighter we were back to normal. The pleasures of home ownership.

Might be it is just us, or might be every homeowner feels this in the first few months of owning a home, a feeling of pride and happiness. A sense of coming home to your own house, lazing in the couch and munching on chips is different from coming home to an apartment. It is just four walls, a cardboard dabba we call home but every bit of it brings a sense of happiness. Even the creaks of the staircase seem like music.

The wise man never stops learning they say and I say as homeowners we learned and learned a lot. From fixing the the dripping water closet to handling power tools to built a brand-new wardrobe. From learning to differentiate between crown molding and molds in the ceilings, from learning to replace the air filters regularly to regularly taking the trash out!

HGTV became our favorite channel the past few months and we have been looking for low-cost (proof we shell out big bucks for our mortgage) renovations plans. And we decided to follow the golden advise given, a can of paint is the cheapest way to change the room. Easily said than done, the plan was to paint the white walls of the guest bedroom and kind of make it look better with a few accessories. After the 30 minute decorating shows on TV we safely assumed that in a couple of weekends we should be done with our project!

A trip to Lowes armed with ideas and we started the process of deciding what color we wanted. The choices numerous and the time consumed countless. After a long tiring session, the decision and work was wisely postponed to the next weekend. But determined to decorate the room, another trip to Lowes and a couple of gallons of paint, a few rollers, brushes later we were all set to go.

The TV shows make it look quite easy but painting is not so easy well it is not too tough also. We cleared the room, the spread out the drop cloth and started preping the room. Preping basically involves taping off the areas you don’t want the paint to go using those blue duct tapes and then cleaning the walls. Believe me preping takes a looooong time. And then we decided to start!

The rollers do a good job of evenly distributing the paint but there are times when the paint drips on spots you don’t want it making the place a mess, the paint supposed to be on walls does get on your hands, face,legs and hair getting you in the Halloween mood.A bit of determination and fun attitude, we were able to get the room painted in about 4 hours. Not at all bad!Yes the walls of our guest bedroom have had a lick of chocolaty paint! And it looks good!

Our to-do list for the room is not yet done, plans include crown molding and then ofcourse the decorative touches! Soon and pretty soon it will be done and then we plan to tackle the master suite!

Homeownership is a pain when the toilets don’t flush and when the AC conks out but it is a absolute pleasure when you get to paint those walls and admire your work! Ahh! the pleasures of homeownership!