Sherry, Clara, Burger and I hit the road this past weekend to help family members in Northern Virginia who, it turned out, had also recently moved. Apparently moving season is contagious in our family. First stop was my little sister Carrie’s new apartment. We somehow took zero photos of her while working, so here’s a snapshot she sent later (the man on the left is her boyfriend Robert, who helps out again a little later).
Carrie rented the apartment last month. You might remember us helping with her first Philadelphia place and her second NoVa apartment. For her birthday back in February she joked that her gift would be us painting her new space, so we wrapped up a practical present—a painting stir stick with a paint-can opener attached—labelled: Redeemable for 1 gallon of Olympic Premium Paint and Painting Labor. We even said it could be exchanged for a Starbucks gift card so she’d have an easy out if plans changed.
Everything went ahead as planned, so on Saturday morning we toured the bedroom with Carrie to choose a color. She wanted a taupe-leaning tan with a touch of gray to coordinate with the curtains she already owns. We landed on Benjamin Moore’s Ashen Tan, color-matched to zero-VOC Olympic Premium Paint. We picked that brand because it’s very low-odor—even the colorants are VOC-free—so it was a safe choice with the baby around. Ashen Tan warms up the room without feeling too dark, keeping the space calm and classic.
Here’s Robert and me in painting mode on Saturday. He deserves credit for rolling most of the room while Sherry cut in and took turns watching the little one. Excuse the blurry iPhone shot snapped mid-project:
Two coats did the trick and took about two hours to apply—less time than it took us to fight rainy traffic to Lowe’s and back (conveniently next to a Starbucks). We returned the next morning to reassemble the room once the paint had dried, and the warmer walls made the apartment feel instantly more like home:
Side note: our go-to neutral is Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Gray, which we’ve written about before and love for its versatile, soft warmth.
Carrie still plans to hang art, photos, and curtains and eventually swap some Ikea pieces for more unique finds, so the room isn’t completely finished yet. Even so, the fresh paint already transforms a basic rental into a cozy, livable space. It’s amazing what a change to the walls can do.
Carrie has plenty of colorful accessories that add life to the room. Sherry couldn’t resist fluffing pillows, draping a blue throw over the chair, and arranging accents on the side table before we took photos—she’s helpless around styling a new space.
Even Carrie’s cat, Duncan, seemed to approve of the cozier vibe—though he was not a fan of being confined to the bathroom during painting because he kept trying to snuggle the paint can and tiptoe through the tray. Burger, meanwhile, happily camped out in his crate.
One of my favorite candid shots from the day is of Sherry adjusting a side table. When she heard me snap the photo and asked what I was shooting, I joked “just white balancing.” I didn’t expect she’d let me include the photo later, but she did—“we’ll keep it real,” she said. Best wife ever.
Carrie plans to paint the living room too, but because of the apartment’s size we couldn’t clear both rooms at once. For that space she chose a cheerful artichoke-green. While Robert and I rolled paint, the ladies (including Clara) debated paint chips and ultimately settled on Valspar’s Fennel Splash for the living room—a lively choice that will pair nicely with Carrie’s accessories.
After finishing at Carrie’s, we drove about 15 minutes to my cousin Travis’s new house to help there too. Travis, his wife Cat, and their daughter Elsa moved recently because baby #2 is due any day now. They’ve only been in the house a few weeks, but their style already shines through with bright bedding and a cheerful yellow rug.
On Sunday morning Sherry helped Cat hang a gallery of frames in a spare room—she’s always happy to take a hammer to someone else’s walls. Since this was likely our last visit before the baby arrives, Sherry also gave them a homemade baby book, made in a gender-neutral style because they haven’t found out the baby’s sex yet.
Sherry created the book the same way she made Clara’s: colorful scrapbook paper slipped into a plastic-sleeved album with printed labels on each page for keepsakes like birth-day trends, milestones, and parents’ predictions. We left a few placeholders, such as cutout footprints that will be replaced with real prints after the baby arrives.
The weekend’s sweetest moment came when Elsa snuggled Clara and Clara leaned in to nuzzle her back. I happened to have the camera ready and captured that cuddle—definitely earned me some major daddy points.
We wrapped up the visit with food, family time, and a competitive round of Apples to Apples. We accidentally invented a fun twist: each round we slipped in an extra random red card for the judge to consider—calling this phantom player “The Computer.” The random card won more rounds than you’d expect, sparking a playful everyone-vs-The-Computer rivalry. In the end Travis narrowly beat The Computer by a single round. It was the perfect low-key celebration—painting, picture-hanging, baby prep, and a little friendly competition to keep us laughing.