Before & After

We don't have cable. We don't have satellite TV. Our rabbit ears bring in about four channels we can see and hear well enough to watch. And for right now, this is fine with us -- we have a lot going on in our lives, not a lot of time, and friends who TiVo favorite shows and save them to watch with us.

But whenever we travel, the first thing we check at our hotel is whether they get HGTV. Despite the fact that we're renters, we love watching homeowners redecorate.

As it turns out, we may soon have the chance to become homeowners -- we're just beginning the process of loan preapproval and internet home searching. In the meantime, though, we're thankful for landlords who are okay with us doing a bit of painting.

We recently took a look at our master bedroom and realized that it looked like all the "before" pictures you've ever seen on a home improvement show. Being designers, we couldn't just pick a color and slap it on the walls. No, we came up with a few options, took photos of our room, and colored the walls in Photoshop. The decision was for a deep red paint, which turned out to be cozy and warm. There are other things we've yet to do (curtains, hanging shelves and pictures, etc.) but here, along with the curtain fabric and a close-up of the stripe detail (Vic's genius idea), are the results of our efforts in true "before and after" format.