Well, the painting is finally done! The total cost was around $1,300.00 (thousands less than hiring prof. painters) as we hired a guy my husband works with to spray it and we did most of the prep and about 1/3 of the painting. We  were also very fortunate to have saved 42% on all our paint. We just had our house re-appraised and the value increase $75,000 more than what we bought it for 8 months ago...now that's sweat equity!!! Well, not all of it, we have invested about $12,000 into it as well.