I promised Bronwyn at least a couple years ago we would paint her bedroom a new color of her choice. She loved the pink walls and the border I had put up for her when she was little, but after 13 or 14 years she was ready for something new. Liam also wanted to paint his bedroom since it was now completely his own. Spring break this year found us taking on this project, both rooms at once.
It's amazing how much kids will do when it is something they are excited about, like painting their bedroom. Both kids worked together to entirely clear out their bedrooms and put the contents in the hallway:
Here are the "Before" pictures of their walls. Bronwyn had gotten most of her border down herself with a squirt bottle and determination. Liam's border was a stenciled trout and pine trees border that had been done the same summer I had first painted Bronwyn's bedroom.
Bronwyn enlisted the help of her best friend Sam. The first day of work involved taping all of the floorboards and door frames. Bronwyn also had to paint over some perfume oil streaks on her walls from where she'd smeared oils from a perfume-making kit she had gotten as a birthday present one year (from a friend. Not from me). I guess she was trying to make her room smell pretty. Bronwyn and Sam wound up with as much primer and paint on them as they got on the walls.
Liam paints primer over the border, which may have not been a wise choice on my part as you'll see below...
He really wanted his whole room to be purple, but we comprised with broad purple stripes that took three coats of paint.
I can only make guesses as to why the purple paint peeled off with the tape when we tried to remove it to get ready for the grey. It may have been the primer layer underneath because I didn't have any problems on the walls where there was no primer. It may have been that we didn't allow the individual coats to completely harden/cure/dry in between adding the next one. Maybe I pressed down the edge of the tape too firmly against the wall. I don't know. But it changed how I approached putting the grey right up against the purple.
Making progress. I loved the yellow Bronwyn chose.
Liam helps remove tape. The original plan called for putting tape over the purple layer to cover it up so we could roller brush right up to the edge of the purple....
...but I didn't trust the tape any longer, so I hand-edged all of the grey right up to the purple with a one-inch foam beveled brush. That took a loooooong time. I went back and tried to fix the purple stripes by hand with a small foam brush and purple paint too.
Almost done in Bronwyn's room...
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And the finished product! The kids took complete responsibility for moving their furniture back into their bedrooms. We'll be getting new window coverings for Bronwyn's window because her blinds were in bad shape when we took them down. At first I wasn't too impressed with the wild designs on her walls, but they've grown on me a lot since then. She's incorporated designs from her novels she is writing, it's exactly what she wanted, and it makes her happy. That makes me happy too. Now I really like it.
Liam's finished room too. He decided to put up the sheet on his bunkbed to make it darker for sleeping. I think we'll be getting him some grey sheets to match his walls. I was pretty excited about how his room turned out. I had not wanted all purple walls and Liam had not wanted any grey walls. I decided to sit down with Pinterest, create a board just for his room, and we scrolled through pictures together, pinning pictures that we liked individually and together. We came across a pin that looked similar to this and both of us looked at it and said, "YES!" Liam is pretty happy with how it turned out too.
Home improvement definitely has its hazards, though. During the painting project I spilled purple paint on Liam's carpet. Yay. Justin also came up with the family project of assembling a shed for our garden stuff and my beekeeping equipment. We've worked on it in short chunks. During an "putting the roof on" segment I was up on a ladder in the middle of the shed trying to screw together two sections of vinyl roofing. In order to get more purchase so I could weight down the outside with my left arm (below) and screw up into the panel with my right, I put my left arm out and over the roof panel. As I started to screw the panels together I shifted my weight on the ladder, losing my balance. The ladder fell away from under me and I got a good scrape on my arm as I started to fall. I knew right away I was going to have something impressive to show for it:
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| Day One: Acquiring the Bruise |
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| Day Two: The Bruise develops some beautiful color |
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| Day Three or Four: The Rainbow Bruise in full glory |
See, in our family, the running philosophy for injuries is that if you have something to show for your pain and trauma then you don't have to do it again. I never have to fall from a shed roof again.
Most of the color is gone now, save for a purple blotchy line where it was always the darkest. More concerning are some lumps under the skin now that don't show, but that I didn't notice until today when I was finally brave enough to actually touch it. Maybe I'll go scare myself on the internet by trying to look up what they might be.
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