We are slowly making inroads on what needs to be done at the new house. At least in making a list.
What needs to be done and what needs to be bought and what we can afford are very different things.
The living room needed to be painted. There were marks on the walls from where things once were. I could not find the shade of grey-beige ( apparently called greige on pinterest blogs) to match what mom had so I had to start from scratch.
I am behind on fashion and style and I hear that grey is on it's way out but after years of a nutmeg brown at my current house, I needed something different. All those years of HGTV have to pay off somehow.
I googled south facing living rooms with lots of light and came up with a few possible shades. I got testers of four shades of grey at just under $11 each. I painted a chunk of two different walls with each of them so I could see how they look as the light changed in the room throughout the day.
One read a light grey. One read blue. One read green. The last was a darker grey that DH was sure we wanted but after seeing how it came out, it definitely would make too dark of a room.
We ended up choosing the one I had originally thought called Grey Owl by Benjamin Moore. It read well in the room and didn't clash with the carpet that I can't afford to change. We worked our way through mudding and sanding and washing the walls and part of the living room is done.
Paint is NOT cheap. Lordy. But this kind I bought covered well and we did the whole living room with one gallon so that is not bad at all.
We plan to steam clean the carpets in there. They have this huge 5 piece china cabinet set that also holds the TV. It's not something I will keep in the long run but the $ for replacing it is not top on our list. The units will have to stay pulled out until the TV provider can come in and do the wiring for it all.
Most of the furniture they had there will stay as ours is staying here at the house for DS2. Ours is now from 2008 and quite worn. Eventually I will replace mom and dads but for now it's fine.
I plan to paint mom and dad's room next. It is actually smaller than the one we have in our little house. And no ensuite, but then we didnt' have that here either.
There is a lot of guilt in painting over what mom did and I know she would be choked at the chaos of the house right now :-)