Killing Me Softly - 5 Months

Remember back when Mike and I met with our realtor about putting our house up for sale?  Well, we didn't list it.  Five and a half years ago we paid $100,000 for our home.  Over the span of four years (when we met with Jane) we had only paid off a teensy bit of our mortgage.  We went to the bank and got an amortization schedule.  It showed us how much of our monthly mortgage payment was going toward the principle and how much was being donated going toward the interest.  Basically, with how the economy and housing market is today, we wanted to get at least $90,000 for our home.  To walk away from a sale with money for a down payment on a new home (instead of literally paying someone to buy it), we obviously needed to owe less than $90,000.  According to our amortization schedule, we would be at that point by November 1st of this year.  So, last February we decided to tough it out for one more year, make the necessary improvements, and get our house on the market by April 1, 2012.  We have 5 months left.

First up on the schedule is the dreaded family room.  This has been an unending room of problems since 2007.  It's a great room!  Lots of natural lighting, laminate wood floors, gas fireplace, outside patio access, you name it!  We spend the majority of our time in that room.  BUT, in 2007 (shortly after Jaden was born), we experienced a crisis.  Apparently the roof leaked when we bought the house and the seller lied about knowing it did.  According to our neighbors, he was on the roof with tar after it rained every time.  You see, he had installed skylights in that room.  Skylights for a pitched roof.  On a flat roof.  We could never make plans when there was rain in the forecast because we had to make sure we were home to strategically place buckets all over.  My grandpa tried to help us out by tarring around the skylights.  He even put a new roof over that room (it's an addition).  During his re-roofing, we discovered that because of the moisture, we had rotted wood and a carpenter ant problem!  Unfortunately, re-roofing only made the problem worse.  We woke up one rainy morning to 18 different leaks in one room.  We had to move everything out.  We had couches in our dining room and the rest of the stuff in our living room.  It was awful.  I cried every single day of my life for a very long time because of the stress that room caused us.  We depleted our savings account and borrowed money from our parents and hired a crew to come in and rip out the skylights and replace the roof on the entire house.  We didn't bother having them fix the ceiling from the inside.  We just wanted the leaks to stop.  Since then, we have not had one single leak!  Now, we just have two gaping holes where skylights used to be.  You can literally see the plywood that is under our shingles.  In addition, we have the water damage to the ceiling from the 18 leaks.  It's a mess. 

Fortunately, I have an awesome friend that hooked us up with a great guy that is coming over bright and early tomorrow morning to renovate that room at a very reasonable price!  Not only is he fixing the ceiling, he is also repairing cracks that we caused by the settling of the room.  I'm taking Monday off work to repaint and put the room back together.  I'm thrilled to have this project upon us!  This was the one major thing that needed to be done.  Everything else (pretty much) is just icing on the cake!

Now, I need your expert advice.  I have only a couple of days to decide on a color to paint!  Right now, the room is yellow with a green accent wall.  There are a ton of windows, too.  You can see a lot of the room here and here.  It is connected to our dining room that is painted a terra cotta orange color.  Oh, and we have a red chair and an off-white couch that will be staying in there.  Help me out! 

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