The rest of the story

Week 2 of vacation was all about painting the girls' room (they share a room). It has been a rather deep periwinkle, which is a pretty color, but the room is small and the color was dark and so the room got even smaller. Both of the girls easily decided they wanted a pink room, a Barbie (tm) pink room. I was pretty certain I would go mad with that sort of color in the room, so I said yes to pink, but no to a deep shade of pink. (This decision was contested until all the furniture was moved back into the room after painting. They now seem very content with the color.) My oldest DD decided that she wanted a wall with stripes in different colors. The youngest absolutely did not want a wall with stripes in the room. Compromise: stripes on the wall next to the oldest's bed, which happens to be the wall with a big window. I thought this would be a bonus, but it really didn't matter since I had to mask off the whole darned wall anyway. The youngest decided to get flower stamps and put that on the wall next to her bed.

We decided on a whole range of what appeared to be pale pastel colors. "We decided" = they agreed to the pale pastel colors for everything but the pink, but I pulled "mom" rank and pale pastels won out for all colors. The first day of painting was also the last day of school. I moved out all of the furniture except the beds (I didn't want to take them apart to get them out of the room) and then I had to do a base coat of primer on the walls (the periwinkle was dark and it was a semi-gloss, I was going back to a flat finish). I ended up using two coats of primer to get it all covered (I think I was just stingy with how thick the coats of paint were). The girls came home, took one look and said "We wanted pink". This in spite of the multiple conversations preparing them for the process of white - pink - stripes/stamps.

Day two was pink everywhere. Both of the girls helped for a while, then moved on to more exciting things like playing outside or watching movies. The youngest was the most interested in painting and also the most efficient. Go figure.

Day three was masking off the one wall for the stripes (photo at top, sorry it is so dark). That job involved lots of measuring and climbing up and down a step stool and lasted for about 4-1/2 hours. I was wiped out! The girls said "we didn't want blue stripes, where are the other colors?"

Day four was painting the stripes and stamping the flower things on the other wall. The stripe colors are purple, yellow, blue and green (and the pink, of course). The girls were very eager to paint the stripes, and they did a great job on this bit. Here's the youngest having a go at some blue paint.


And the oldest taking a turn with the green. Do you see all of that tape?!


The actual painting part didn't take so long. Removing the tape from the wall was a bit of a nightmare. There were about 5 or 6 places where the tape stripped the paint completely off the wall down to the plaster board underneath. Fortunately, once I stopped muttering bad words under my breath, I did see that it was only the pink that had stripped off and not the other colors in the stripes. I spent about an hour and a half touching up all of those spots before we could move on the the stamps. Once the touch-ups were done, I then shifted the furniture to do the stamps on the opposite wall. There were various flowers, a butterfly and dragonfly stamps and we used the same colors as the stripes. The stamps did not turn out as well because our walls are very, very textured (which I hate!). However, my daughter is happy with the results and it doesn't look bad, just not as nice as it would on a smoother wall. I suppose you might call the effect "rustic". Ha!

Here is the final result of our 4 days of effort. I took the pictures before I hung up all of their art, just to get a better view of the stripes. I must say I'm pleased, but I won't be taking on anything like this for some time. All of these big house projects really wore out my knees and I'm just exhausted.


The pink turned out much darker than it appeared on the sample card, but it is lighter than the periwinkle, so the girls are happy with it. I painted the green dresser next to the bed for the previous color scheme in the room. I toyed with the idea of repainting it to match this one, but I was DONE painting, so that will have to wait. I did paint each part of the window sill to match one of the stripe colors. Himself says it looks like a circus tent. Dork. It looks brilliant! The oldest is delighted with the stripes and (a week later) is still talking about how cool her room is.

Mom scores one point.

One big negative: I noticed that I seem to have created another cyst in my wrist from all of the painting. I could absolutely scream in frustration and anger over that, but so far it doesn't hurt and is not interfering in any way with my activities. I'm hoping it will go away on its own, unlike the other one. I wouldn't go through that surgery again unless it was as bad as the other one, but I would be really, really, really unhappy to have to do so. I'm just trying to pretend it isn't there. Funny, my daughter caused the injury that led to the first one, and now painting her room has brought on the second one. Good thing she's so cute! I had no idea that my wrist was still so vulnerable or I would have postponed the painting job. It has been 7 months, afterall. Oh well, there are worse things, and like I said, so far it isn't causing me any trouble.

On the knitting front, I took the blue sweater to a 4th of July party at some friends from church, an annual event usually involving about 40+ people & some fireworks at the end. I have now reached the end of the length for my sweater. WOO-HOO! I need to do the garter edge (split the stitches so there is a split at the sides) and sleeves and finishing bits. Yippee! More on that as it progresses.

I also got some very interesting conversation in with a fellow who has made himself a CD drop spindle and is carding his own fiber, or is prepared to card his own fiber. I can't really tell and the conversation kept twisting away before I could verify what he was up to. It is a good thing I only see him once a year. He was trying to talk me into getting a fleece and doing all the processing up to a sweater, just because it would be fun (he is not a knitter, btw). Cheeky man. I hope to do it someday, when the kids are older and I (hopefully!) have more time. If I spent more time with him I'd probably own my own sheep and add a loom to my life as well. Talk about an enabler! I wonder how his wife manages him... LOL