I actually started working on the entryway over the holiday break. It did not work out. I’m insecure about choosing paint colors. I pick colors based on nebulous notions that I think are valid at the time. A friend suggested that in order to tie the hallway together and make it warm and inviting I should pull a color from the exposed brick wall and carry it through to the other wall. I saw it in my head and it made perfect sense. I loved the idea, especially the part where she said I should add beautiful moulding to the doors and paint them a super shiny white. It all sounded so fancy and posh. I carefully photographed the brick wall using my Benjamin Moore Color Capture app and I poured over paint chips so I would get exactly the right color to pull the hallway together. Over two days, I stucco’d the hallway in that lucious earthy color. When I was finished, I tried to talk myself into liking it. I wanted to like it because I liked the idea of it. I wanted the entryway to look warm and posh and pulled together. But it did not look good, and there was no more denying it when my daughter said “Mom, it looks like the before picture”.

In order to redo stucco over top of stucco, you have to sand it with a machine. It is a messy dusty job that I was putting off doing. Then I thought of the teenagers – why not pay them to do it? With so many adults looking for work, after school jobs are a rarity. Teenagers are expensive beings that eat a lot and go to the movies in packs. It’s near impossible to get your own to do anything, but other people’s teenagers are game. Thus my daughter’s friend Will happily stepped up to the plate with the promise of some spending money and lunch.

Will's mom even sent over homemade cookies!