When the kids are away the parents will PAINT

This summer a miracle happened. For the first time in the Cheek Family history, my husband and I were without kids for two and half days. Truly, a miracle. As a parent of twins, I never want to burdened anyone with one kid, let alone TWO kids. So the fact that we got "rid"of all four at the same time was..A MIRACLE.

So what did we do? Did we go out for dinners and take long walks at night? Heck NO. I decided it was the perfect time to paint and reconfigure TWO bedrooms. I had two and half days, a lifetime for a parent with no free time, ever.

Did I make the projects easy and straight forward? Of course NOT!

We have four bedrooms on the third floor of our house and both sets of twins were sharing two of  the bedrooms which left one empty room for all of our "treasures". That is code for "all the stuff that we did not know what to do with so we just threw in that room and closed the door, pulled the blinds shut, and never stepped foot into."

So, we had a bedroom not being used. Total waste of space in a house where we have no extra space. It was my then 6 year old daughter that gave me the nudge to finally put an end to that. Up until then, she was sharing a tiny, tiny bedroom with her twin BROTHER. One day she said to me, "Mommy, when can Owen move out of my bedroom? He is making it smell funny!" Uh, how do I respond to that?

I started with the room with all of our "treasures". First, I moved EVERYTHING out into the hallway to be sorted later. This room was going to be for Owen, age 6, the little guy with the funny smell. I decided that striping the walls would be a great idea. A blog I read regularly, Iheartorganizing, gave me the inspiration for the walls.

The walls were already painted an off-white so striping them with one other color would be easy...NOT. That room is 100 years old and NOTHING in that room is straight. I ended up using a standard ruler and a level to make sure that the lines were straight. I tried using a large level, but the walls are so bowed, that I could not get a straight line. I did one wall (the only wall without any windows or doors) and decided that I must do the rest of the room and that it would not be "that bad". I think I have blocked out how sloped the walls, ceilings and floors are in that room. Another miracle occurred when I finished. The stripes all look level and even.

Benjamin Moore Minced Onion and Wedgewood Gray

Because Owen's room took just a wee bit longer than I anticipated, I had to really rush to get Lily's room painted. To do so, I kept it simple. The walls were a pale green color so I assumed that the pale pink  that I chose would not require any primer. Big mistake. ALWAYS prime first. It took MANY coats of paint, two gallons of the paint color. Had I primed, one gallon of the paint color would have been fine. The husband had to step in and help me. When I asked him for help rolling, I looked pathetic. Paint covered all parts of my body. A good look when you are asking for help at the 11th hour!

Benjamin Moore Palest Pink

Once all the painting was done, and I was still alive, I headed to Ikea to get a few shelves for their rooms. Lily's room has this "nook" in it since it was part old house and part new addition. As soon as the room was painted I knew that I wanted her to have a "window seat" with curtains as an opening.  I could just see it in the room and had read blogs where people had used Ikea Expedit Series to make benches. Again, for this project, Iheartorganzing, was very helpful.

After I finished the room and the "window seat" I knew something was missing. I did not like the plain wall behind the window seat. I thought about stripping it with paint, etc but knew that I did not want anything as permanent as wall paper. Then it hit me that I should try scrap paper on the wall. Don't know where that came from, but I went with it. I found black scrapbook paper at JoAnn Fabric with a cutout design. Each sheet was 12 x 12 so I just lined them up and glued them to the wall using glue dots. Since the wall color comes through the cutouts, it really looks like wall paper. So far, it has held up.

Owen's room got two Ikea Expedit Series shelves turned vertically and a desk found on Craigslist. I put a board across the top and plan to put crown molding to complete the look, yet another idea from Iheartorganizing.

 So, now that all kiddies have new rooms, I want to paint and redecorate the master bedroom....