Whose bright idea was this?

Oh, wait...it was mine. The bright idea I'm referring to was painting our bedroom blue with a striped wall four years ago when we moved into our house. Okay, actually, it was a supercool paint job, worthy of Trading Spaces, if I do say so myself. I really liked it a lot. And because Brock, Robin and I all worked on painting it at the time, it really didn't take very long to do.

But this summer, we got a really fab, new, chocolate brown microsuede duvet and awesome red sheets (keep your comments about red sheets to yourself; they rock and I don't care what you think about them). Chocolate brown and red don't go with medium blue, dark blue and green stripes. They just don't. And last weekend, I finally hit the critical point where I decided it was time to suck it up and paint the bedroom, as I'd been intending to do for months, so that, well, everything would match.

I took Halloween off from work so I could work on this project (I was planning to take the afternoon off, anyway, to take Hannah to the kids' Halloween party at Brock's office, so I just made a day of it). I actually kind of needed a mental health day, anyway, and there really is something therapeutic about being in the house ALONE (which I hardly ever am), with MY music cranked up really loud, doing something that requires absolutely no thought.

I went to Home Depot in the morning and picked a beautiful, medium beige-y kind of color called "oat cake." That may be my favorite paint name ever, just because it's fun to say and really sort of nonsensical. I have no idea what an oat cake looks like...but I guess it's the color of my bedroom. Anyway, picking up the paint and supplies went very smoothly. There was a really funny moment when a man asked the guy at the paint counter why they only carried white paint. I have no idea how you get to be in your 40s (which is about how old this guy looked) without knowing that paint colors have to be mixed. I tried not to laugh out loud.

Anyway, the reason I was kind of cursing the blue color (and the stripes) was because I was painting beige over it, which is significantly lighter. So I had to prime the whole room. By the time I finished that, it was time to get some lunch (almost 1:30 already) and then get ready to pick Hannah up from daycare. (I really enjoyed my Taco Supremes from Taco Bell, by the way.)

That meant I was putting the first coat of actual paint on at 8:30 Halloween night. I finished about 11:00. Brock and I slept on the couch since our bedroom 1) smelled like paint and 2) was covered in plastic drop cloths.

So I put the second coat of paint on Thursday night, starting about 8:00. Finished up at 10:30, decided two coats was enough, and cleaned up. I was done around 11:00 again. We slept on the couch again Thursday night.

So basically, I painted our room three times. However, it does look very pretty, and I like it a lot. It looks, somehow, more grown up than it did before - which I think is good, but also maybe a little sad. Like I'm too old for crazy stripes on my wall anymore. We're going to have to get some artwork, and I asked my mom to make us some red curtains, and then it will be perfect. If I had more energy, I'd take a picture and post it, but I don't really feel like it. *chuckle*

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our closet: thanks for being there, and for taking up a whole lot of space on one of the long walls, so that I wouldn't have to paint quite so much. I saved that wall for last all three times, and it was nice to have it go quickly.

I don't feel like painting anymore for awhile.