When you tell people you are painting you get one of two responses:

I love painting! Great idea!

or

I hate painting and when you move out you’re going to be kicking yourself for doing so.

I really wanted to paint in our last apartment, but TH wasn’t really up for it and I didn’t push the idea any farther. This time, I started talking about painting really early, and started talking about the very real possibility that I would be able to book extra photo sessions during the winter months because of our amazing lighting conditions. Blank white walls are both boring and difficult to expose for, so I pleaded for just one painted wall in the living room.

Kristin of Bien Living Designs was Mrs. Quiche on Weddingbee, and we’ve been growing closer ever since I announced my move to Chicago. She is just about the sweetest person I’ve ever met, and she offered to help us conquer the task of painting. I’m so clueless that a random person off the street probably could have helped me do a better job than I would have done on my own, but it just so happens that Kristin is an interior designer professionally. And I don’t mean she has a business out of her living room, I mean someone pays her actual money to work in an office in downtown Chicago doing interior design. Can you see why I’m crazy lucky that she was willing to help us with this project?

Per FTC guidelines I want to make it clear that she is offering her services as a designer for free, and I am blogging about them, but she didn’t email me and say “If I help you decorate your apartment will you write about me on your blog?”, it was more like “Hey bee friend, I’m a really nice person and I have only met you one time but I want to help you decorate your new apartment because I like helping people.”

Okay so maybe the email didn’t say those exact words but that’s the basic idea. :)

First up on the decorating list was painting! I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible because I knew it would be a lot easier to do with empty rooms.

This  what we started with. When I emailed her with ideas about decorating the living room I sent pictures of all of the pieces we would have, and told her to go ahead and tell us what paint color to get. The thought of starting the Is this the right color? Maybe one shade lighter? Or darker? discussion stressed me out so I decided to go with whatever she thought was best. Kristin not only offered to help us with the painting, she picked up the paint and brought some supplies from her house so we wouldn’t have to invest in things that we only planned to use once. For the living room she bought PPG Pure Performance eggshell in Summer Suede.

TH also agreed that we should paint the kitchen based on the photo of the kitchen in the model apartment from this post. For the kitchen she chose the color pickling spice.

Kristin said taping edges was a waste of time, so we laid our plastic down and filled our trays and got to work. She carefully went around the edges with a special brush while I used a roller brush quickly fill in the middle. When we made mistakes and got paint on the floorboards and such we quickly wiped it off with a damp rag.

We only had two brushes for the living room but we had some for the kitchen, so Kristin left TH and I to finish the living room while she tackled the kitchen.

Good news, TH walked away from the experience saying that painting really isn’t that bad. Hooray! As long as painting it white again isn’t completely awful I think we’ll be painting future spaces as well. I also need to give That Husband the credit he deserves, he ended up doing much more work than I did. Painting the wall in the living room and above the counters in the kitchen was easy enough that we decided to do a room in the office as well. I’ll show you a picture of the room later because I want you guys to help me what wall vinyl to put on it (if you haven’t seen wall vinyls they look like this or this.)

The finished product! Doesn’t it look amazing?

And Kristin deserves all credit for the painting of kitchen, she did it all herself. It’s so cheery in there now.

Kristin not only did the painting she also pitched in and did a bit of babysitting when That Husband and I were painting. This won’t be the last you see of her smiling face since she’s offered to help with the rest of the decorating once our belongings are put away.

Maybe you want a little bit of Kristin in your life? She has a service called Long Distance Design, where she will work with you to create presentation boards to help decorate your space. If you’re like my mom, you would never need this service. My mom is really creative, she can see a space and picture how different patterns, textures, and colors  would work together to create something beautiful. If you’re like me though, with no ability to visualize how a space can be best utilized, then Kristin’s service would be awesome for you. I really like that she not only makes you presentation boards like this, but she also sends you a list of links where you can buy everything pictured

The regular price for her service is $250, but if you contact her and mention That Wife she’ll do her Long Distance Design for $175 (which I’m pretty sure every other interior designer out there would say is crazy cheap). If anyone ends up hiring her and writes a blog about the experience with before and after I would love to write a post here on That Wife to show everyone how she transformed your space. Kristin is such a sweetheart and I think anyone who hires her will be really impressed with the result!

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