King Julian & the Sleeping Baby

Have you ever tried to do any home improvement projects with a sleeping baby in the house?  It's tricky to say the least. One day you are able to rip kitchen cabinets from the wall and she doesn't move an inch and the next you drop a paint brush on the opposite side of the house and the phrase "Unleash Hell" doesn't even begin to describe the holy terror emanating from her bedroom. Allie and I consider ourselves pretty handy so we often try to tackle most of our home projects together. When we recently bought our new house we assumed that it would be business as usual, but boy were we mistaken.
 Julep, our 4 month old daughter, has caused us to seriously rethink the DIY in Allie and I. I can say with a certain degree of confidence that Julep is one of the best behaved babies I've ever seen.  Until recently she hadn't truly cried with any sort of conviction, so when I say we've been blessed I mean it. She has now, however, discovered she has a voice and proudly announces to the world her joy, pain, frustration, etc. and as any parent will tell you it can be overwhelming.

We started painting the interior walls of our house and things seemed to be going along pretty well. I mean we painted the bathroom, the living room and started priming the mudroom.  A problem started to arise when we realized that we hated our living room color, needed to put another coat on the bathroom, and the mudroom, well, it became its own animal (pun intended... you'll get it in a minute).
Our home must have previously been some sort of child daycare center because all the outlets have covers on them, some doors lock automatically, oh and I forgot to mention that the mudroom was painted as a life-size depiction of the movie Madagascar. Yes, King Julian and his "Freaks" greeted me everyday as I came in from work. 

The mudroom was only about 150 square feet so it seemed like an easy project to tackle. It wasn't! The bright orange, red, and yellow became almost impossible to cover.  The characters' eyes would glare at you through the white primer like an angry ghost from Paranormal Activity or something. Creepy! This room also connects both the garage and the outside to the rest of the house and if any of you have watched the weather in the Midwest then you can imagine how freezing cold this room is. Between the subzero temperatures, the endless coats of paint, the glaring eyes ever watching me work, and Julep, we have been either too tired, cold, overwhelmed (or just plain freaked out) to finish. In short, we gave up on painting. Mercy was shown to us however! Thank God for Craigslist!

We started searching for painters and through the normal channels of friends, yellow pages, etc. we found that we either had to wait 6 weeks and/or pay $3,500 to get 5 rooms painted. We were so discouraged until Allie remembered to look on Craigslist and see if we could find anyone that seemed legit. To our surprise it was filled with many painters, carpenters, plumbers and the like that were licensed, insured and looking for jobs to get them through the slow winter months. The painting is ongoing, but so far so good!  Mike "The Painter" came over immediately, gave us a quote of $900 and started the next day.  He has been a God-send! I will keep you posted on how it pans out, but we are really excited! We also have a couple of plumbers coming over to check out some others issues as well.

I know that some people are hesitant about using Craigslist and I will confess that I loaded my Ruger and left it with Allie before I went to work. (That resulted in a very comical accidental encounter of the non-dangerous variety involving Allie's assistant). I have, however, learned something very valuable that I think applies to situations like these. It came from living and working with the homeless.  Most people are good people. Profound, I know, but it's true.  Mike "The Painter" just needed some work to help pay the bills through the winter. Most of the homeless people I met weren't looking to screw me over or pull the wool over my eyes.  They were hurting people who were hungry, cold and without hope. I say this not to press you into hiring Mike "The Painter" instead of using a bigger company or shame you into giving a five dollar bill to the next homeless person you meet. I do, however, want us be smart and not just give into what mainstream or Main Street would tell us to do. Do your research when it comes to your life! Whether it's repainting walls or joining a gym; research all your options, even the ones that others might scoff at. Gathering all the information will give you the confidence to make the best decision for you and your family... and you might even save a little money. In regards to the homeless, the man who ran the homeless ministry in Daytona always said, "We are all one or two decisions away from being homeless." Some food for thought.