A few weekends ago we painted our guest bedroom. The funny thing is—and isn’t this always the case?—we didn’t really set out to paint the room. That reality set in when we discovered that the paint with which we’d hoped to cover up some holes didn’t quite match the existing paint on the walls.

While I was fretting about how much work it would take to paint the room (I’d never painted a whole room before), Stephanie was primarily concerned with whether we’d both be able to agree on a color (on short notice). Once I’d adjusted to the fact that our hole patching project was now a room painting project, I promised that I would not be anal about picking a color. Several moments later we were both on her scooter heading to the hardware store.

After initially entertaining the idea of yellow, we eventually settled on red (Windsor Burgundy to be precise). We spent the rest of that Saturday taping off the molding and applying a single coat of primer, and then we spent all day Sunday rolling on two (and a half) coats of paint (it probably could have used a third, but we were exhausted). Later that week we touched up the trim, hung a curtain rod, and slowly started moving furniture into the room, just in time for my parents’ visit over Labor Day weekend.