Interior Painting: Do-it-yourself Vs. Hiring A Painter

My wife and I live in Marietta, Ga, a sub-urb of Atlanta. We are just staring our lives together and recently became homeowners. As anyone who's bought their first home can tell you, the experience comes with a myriad of challenges and, at least for me, firsts. I dove into the many new tasks that came with my home. I even enjoyed most of them. I had a new lawn to maintain, a new roof to blow the leaves off of and a sense that, well, this is what adults do. The exterior of our new home was my domain. My wife, however, took much more of an interest in decorating and re-decorating the interior. I voiced my opinion on occasion, but was basiclly relegated to "furniture mover" when she inevitably decided a room just wasn't "right". I rarely argued with her design plans, as she knew much more than I did about interior decoration. One thing, though, that was clear to us both was that we hated, I mean despised, the colors on every wall. The living room was a dark burgundy that made the room feel like a cave. The bedrooms were pea-green. It all had to go. So, we decided, we would have a painting adventure. We didn't need painters. We'd do it ourselves! We'd never painted anything of sigifigant size or value, but how hard could it be? After all, I was the king of my new domain! I researched everything having to do with home painting and decided I could do it for less money and just as well as a professional painter. I stocked up on rollers, brushes, a new ladder....the works. My wife and I found a perfect shade of paint for each room in our house. We were set. That weekend, we woke up bright and early and together started our project. We began in our master bathroom, a lovely shade of light blue. First, of course, we had to put painter's tape around the perimeter of the room, on light switches, ect... It took, well, a while. Still, when it came time to paint, we were raring to go. We acted as a team. She took the lower half of the walls, I did up by the ceiling. It wasn't all that hard, though it took a little longer than expected. When we'd covered every inch, we stood back and admired our work. The color was right, sort-of. It was a bit darker than we'd anticipated, but overall good. We let it dry before removing all of the tape. This is where the first flaws became evident. The clean, straight line of paint I'd invisioned meeting the ceiling wasn't very clean or straight. I then notced that there were actually several places where blue paint had splattered onto my nice whit ceiling. How? We were so careful. Oh well, still pretty good. Next, we moved on to the master bedroom. We went through the process of putting down the dro cloth, taping the perimeter (this time EXTRA carefully) and got to work on a larger room. This one took a longer time. Hours, in fact. Half-way through, we wanted to quit. It was nearing dinner time, we were hungry and had started to bicker. I kept at it though. It was no longer fun, but still had to be done. I finally finished. When the paint had dried, I took down the tape. Still, jagged edges! What was I doing wrong? At this point I thought about calling a pro painter in Atlanta, but I didn't want to give up, not to mention the money I'd already spent on paint and tools. I dug my heels in and decided that tomorrow would be different. I woke up and immediately dreaded another day of painting. I got to it, though. I began, alone 9my wife now hated painting. She wanted to call a professional) in the guest bathroom. Same story. I guess I'm just not much of a painter. There was no more joy. It was just hard work and the results looked sloppy. So, the next day I gave in. I called a Marietta painting company and they came out and gave me an estimate. I hated to pay more than I already had and really felt bad when I realized they were only charging about what I'd already spent. We went to my wife's mother's house in Atlanta for the next couple of days to stay out of the crew's hair, though they had told us we could stay. When we returned, I was amazed. It was done...all of it, to perfection. It was what I'd seen in my vision of what I could make it be. The painters did amazing work and even cleaned up the edges that my wife and i had left ragged. I felt foolish for thinking I could do as good a job as these guys. They were pros. I was and am thoroughly satisfied with the work the painters did and with the lesson that I learned. Just because you technically can "do-it-yourself" it doesn't mean you should. Having a service do it for you is usually not much more expensive, less time-consuming and frankly done better! I know how to change the oil in my car, but I still let the mechanics handle it for me. These are the lessons I am learning and will continue to learn in my journey to be the ultimate Atlanta sub-urban husband!