Painting again.

Yes it's true. I know; you're all thinking, "Didn't they just paint the entire main floor of their house last October???" Yes, we did. I've been threatening to redo Claudia's room for about the last year maybe even 2. Threatening? you ask. Yes threatening Dan. :) We've finally decided this is the summer to do it, for a number of reasons.

One is that Duncan, while still fitting on the mattress of the crib turned toddler bed, is getting too big for it. I'm more concerned he is going to jump on it and the entire bed is going to collapse. For such a small boy, he has a really BIG jump. So he will need a new bed.

Second is that Claudia has the smaller of the two bedrooms. So I've been thinking a loft style bed would give her more floor space to play. And now she is finally, I think, old enough to handle a loft style bed without trying to jump off of it. Duncan on the other hand will need continual supervision while playing in Claudia's room until I'm sure he understands that there will be no jumping off of the bed onto the large bean bag.

Third is that Claudia is 5.5 years old and her room is not quite what you would expect. What is her decor? Well, embarrassingly enough, it's still her classic pooh nursery. But she still loves it. She almost cried when I told her we would have to remove the pooh wall paper border off the wall to repaint. She actually asked if we could put it back up after painting. :) I think I've gotten her over that now, since she got to pick out the color of her room.

On that topic, I'll mention I've become a master manipulator where Claudia is concerned. It isn't that I'm devious or mean, it's just the Claudia is SO amenable about things in general that it's fairly easy for me to find acceptable alternatives for her to choose from. Well, acceptable to me isn't always acceptable to Dan. Ha!

So she chose a nice purple color (after I steered her away from the pinks, I think Dan about fainted at the thought of having a pink room in his house!). I steered Dan away from the so very faint colors as to practically be white and steered Claudia away from the so very purple colors that it would feel like some sort of cave. The color? "Purpling Dawn". Yeah. It's purple enough that you know it isn't white, but it's light enough that Dan's eyes won't be burned in their sockets every time he walks into her room.

So yesterday we spent the day stripping wall paper. Let me give you a few hints when you think it looks oh so cute to put the wallpaper border around the middle of the room, then cut out scenes from other wallpaper borders to not so randomly place on the lower half of the wall. Don't. The only good thing is that I so completely glued those little pictures that we ended up just painting over them. Well, all but two of them. One Dan stripped off today while we were painting. The other I soaked with so much wallpaper adhesive removal gel.....well, it completely stripped off the texture of the wall as well, all the way down to the drywall. Yeah. Oh, AND we coated the entire thing after wallpapering with a clear sealant to prevent the wallpaper from peeling. The only problem was that it soaked under the edges and acted as a glue for the wallpaper too. But the wallpaper adhesive removal gel didn't work on that stuff. Yeah.

So we spent yesterday stripping, sanding, etc to remove this wallpaper border from around her room. Several times I heard the phrase "No more wallpaper!" coming out of Dan's mouth. Yeah.

Which leads me to Claudia's choice on decor. So now we have "purpling dawn" walls. I bought a small amount of a darker coordinating purple to paint some picture frames for artwork on her walls. Oh yes, and she choose a white ("glacier") finish for her loft bed and new chest of drawers (much to Dan's chagrin, since he *really* liked the grain of the wood). To help her choose the decor I suggested that the purple would go really well with a tinkerbell/fairy theme (and I might be able to keep the green curtains and green finials on the the hardware then too!), or perhaps a purple princess theme (the pinks would still look nice with the purple and white), or maybe we could even find some my little pony decorations (she has a HUGE amount of my little pony toys that she plays with daily, most of which she has purchased with her own money from birthdays/Christmas/piggybank).

The problem is that Claudia is so amenable, she has difficult making a decision. So far we have purchased no decorations because one day it is tinkerbell, another it's princess, and a third it's my little pony. Sigh. She has to decide eventually.

Anyway, today we gave up on removing any more of the wallpaper and just painted over it. Poor Dan. He sanded the spackle and told me to go ahead and start painting. That was his first mistake. Let me just say that I'm not the neatest person when I paint. It isn't that I drop all that often (though I did drop once on the carpet today, but Dan dropped a couple of times :p ), I have a hard time with the paint can and the roller tray. After a little while of struggling with these to paint two small wall areas with the roller, I gave up and moved on to the paint brush and trim. This is my favorite part of painting and I'm booking it. :) Dan has started using the roller to paint the walls while I'm tending to the trim under and around the window. Aha, the toy box is right behind me, I'll just sit down......in something wet......what the heck would be wet on the toy box? So I get back up and ask Dan, "Um Dan, I think I need some help here...." What does Dan do?

He looks over and laughs.

Yes, laughs. Because apparently I forgot that I put the paint can lid on the toy box when I opened the can. Yep, sat right on top of the lid. After changing and attempting to wash the shorts I thought they could become my official "painting" shorts. Then I realized that every time I wear them Dan will say, "Hey, remember when you sat on the paint can lid??? HaHaHaHa..." Nope, into the trash they go.

Add into this mix the almost hysterical breakdown Claudia had about 30 minutes after we started painting. "Mom! Why are you painting my walls white???? I picked purple. Why are you painting them white???!!!" Sob, hysterics follow as I quickly explain that the paint looks white while it is wet because it is such a pale color, but point out that the paint next to her white ceiling looks purple.

Dan did 2 coats of the paint with the roller while I was still working on trim stuff. So he opted to take the kids out to McD's while I finished up. Claudia was much happier with the color after two coats and some drying time. (One of the nice things about living in NM is that your first coat of paint on the first wall you paint is already dry by the time you finish the entire first coat.)

Pictures you ask? Oh yes I'll get pictures, but it's evening now and the lighting is poor in her room. So I'll take a picture tomorrow of the color. Then in 4 weeks when her furniture arrives, maybe I can take a few pictures of her completed room. Maybe by then she'll have decided on the decor. Maybe.

Love,