You've heard it a million times: Paint is the easiest way to transform a room.
It's not for me. I think I'd rather have the job of reshelving the tiny paint chips that people scatter all over the place at the hardware store (you know who you are) than paint a room. First you have to prep -- that involves washing walls, taking down window treatments, removing wall plates from outlets, scraping and sanding and stripping on painter's tape. And that's before you get to pick up a roller.

The fun part should be picking the paint color. HGTV says the hottest color combinations are grey and brown, green and silver, blue and black. But there's no magic arrow pointing to the perfect hue in the floor-to ceiling- displays of thousands of paint chip samples at stores.

I was seduced by the whole transformation thing and wanted to paint my family room. Miraculously, I had it narrowed down to two shades of green — cedar grove and sweet basil. But like the experts always point out -- many of us are afraid of going too dark. So I chose the paler cedar grove, which fades into the background, and regretted it. The deeper, richer green would have felt warmer and more organic. A big disappointment after two weekends of prepping and painting. Next time, I'll just toss some new colorful pillows on the sofa and call it a day.

But if you want to give it a shot, Valspar is giving away 1,000 free paint project starter kits every day until mid-April. The kits include an 8-ounce paint sample, mini roller, paint tray, coordinating paint chips and a $5 coupon for Valspar paint at Lowe's. You get to choose from 3,000 Valspar colors — talk about overwhelming.

To order a kit, go to www.Facebook.com/Valsparpaint and click "Like."

Do you enjoy picking colors, prepping and painting a room? Is the "room transformation" worth the agony?