Step 13 & 14...paint & brick

I started painting the day after they primed the walls. Took me 2 1/2 days to finish it, but it was worth it. Painting a new room was so easy because I didn't have to tape off since the trim is not up yet. Each kid has two colors on their walls. We are going to put borders up between the colors. Alexis' borders arrived today and Nolen's was out of stock, so we will have to pick another one for him soon. My next step is to stain 3 doors & 1 folding closet door, all the trim & other various boards that will be used. Since they took a window out of my room & the kids room to put on the south end of the house, I now have holes to fill. I decided to make them built in bookshelves, which will be so much easier than putting up dry wall & painting to match the rest of the room.

So you might be asking where the pictures are of the painting. We'll I'm not posting them until the borders are on, so stay tuned to future posts.

On Friday, four guys bricked the whole west side of the house. We were able to keep about 900 bricks from the original south end of the house & were hoping to re-use them. When we received a few brick samples, the bricks were a lot shorter. So we were told that they wouldn't be able to mix them in. So we ordered @4,000 bricks. When the bricks arrived they were a tad bit longer than the samples, but still a little bit shorter than the original bricks. Pete talked with the brick layers & they thought they could go ahead and use the 900 we saved. We decided to mix the old in with the new on all 3 sides. The new wall is a little bit lighter than the original, but over time I think they will match better. Actually if we throw some dirt on the new, they would match better. lol Today we got out the power washer & sprayed some of the original bricks to see if we could lighten them up. We did see a change since some of the bricks had green gunk growing on them. Though it's not a perfect match, it's still better than siding in my opinion. I really think after a few years, you won't even notice the difference. I'll have to plant some landscaping bushes in front of it as well.

Nolen helping move original bricks in place for the workers.

The complete wall. Took them 8 hours. I was just expecting them to get 1/2 of it done. They worked very fast.

I almost had to stand in the road to get the whole house in the photo. House looks so much longer now. I just realized that I now have 2 more rooms to clean. Now is the time I teach my kids to clean up their own rooms!