The verdict is in...

The shutters are black. We are almost done painting the exterior. The good news is we got a power paint sprayer!!! It took Jarrod about 2 hours to do what took me 4 days to do by hand. On the one hand I'm so excited to have this paint sprayer from here on out... but it's also frusterating to think about all the time and pain it could have saved me in painting. I'm just glad we have it now! We are going to stain the fence, and with that thing it will be an hour job rather than a full weekend job.

Exterior Before:

The before picture actually looks better than the after because the house had grass and bushes then. The foundation guys tore out all of our bushes and then put them back lopsided. Jarrod cut down all the bushes and the tree in front with a jig saw... this is after he tried uprooting the bushes with a crowbar. I think he may need some gardening tools. Now all that's left of our bushes are in pieces in the front yard... so it doesn't look great right now. We have someone coming over on Friday to help us level the ground and make it a little more appealing, although it's still not going to be green because it's winter.

Exterior After painting:

Here is my mirror thing I made. It's going in the dining room across from the big window. I can't wait to see it hanging up. I'm happy with the way it turned out, although it was modified from the original due to some calculation errors on my part (can you believe it?) There were supposed to be 1/4 inch dowels painted the same color as the moulding I put around the edges inbetween the mirrors... but I cut one of the pieces of moulding too much and this was the second mistake... so I just worked with what I had rather than going to Lowes and getting another 8ft piece of moulding and spending another $10 on it. I think it turned out pretty well considering.

We scheduled the photographer to come on Tuesday. The lawn and moving our furniture is taking place on Friday... so we should be all finished by Tuesday. Fingers crossed.