Wow, what a weekend! I woke up way too early on Friday and spent the morning loading up my iPod and packing up painting accessories for my niece and nephew's surprise room makeovers.
When I got to my sister's house, she was already packing up toys and moving furniture toward the middle of each kid's room. Here's the "before" shot of my niece's room:
This is the yellow paint that still adorns my painting shirt.
She's ten, so she was wanting something less childish.
My five-year-old nephew's room started out looking like this:
The wallpaper border had a Western theme with horses, cowboy boots, cacti, etc.
I started Friday's work day removing wall anchors and spackling holes in both kids' walls. Then we made our hardware store shopping list and went to buy paint and supplies. Once we got back from the store, we had a quick lunch out on the back deck.
At some point, we decided that I would paint my nephew's room and my sister would handle my niece's room, so I hit all my spackle holes with primer and laid out the drop cloths.
We had to stop so my sister could teach a yoga class at 5:45 p.m., but that was fine because we were both running out of steam by then. We picked up a pizza on the way home, had dinner while watching an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," then each got one coat of paint or primer on the lower half of our respective rooms.
I used my Wagner Paintmate roller, which suctions paint into its hollow handle and feeds it through holes in the roller cover. It is SO much faster than a regular roller and I think it's less messy, too. Unfortunately, the time you save painting goes into cleaning the thing, but I still love it.
We crashed early on Friday and slept until about 7:30 a.m. on Saturday. After a needlessly lengthy pancake breakfast fundraiser for my niece's soccer team, we went home and started getting serious about covering the rooms with paint. We had all our coats completed by the time we had to stop and go to a friend's house for a game night.
After a rollicking evening of Taboo and Balderdash (and perhaps one margarita too many), we headed back to my sister's house and turned in for the night. I would have slept a lot better if her cat, Hutch, hadn't decided to come up and bite my face at 4:30 a.m.
Sunday was devoted to putting the rooms back in order. We peeled off all the tape, arranged the furniture, put on the new bedding, put up the shelves and curtains, and applied vinyl artwork to the walls of both rooms. Then we had to clean up the mess we'd left all throughout the house.
Here's how my niece's room turned out:
It's a nice, contemporary style that she can enjoy into her teens.
My nephew's new room has a rock star theme:
As you might be able to guess, we decided to paint over the wallpaper border rather than try to remove it. I think it came out really great.
My brother-in-law had taken the kids to Oklahoma for the weekend and he delayed his return to make sure my sister and I would be back from her 4:30 p.m. yoga class for the big reveal. When they got home, my sister and I went upstairs with my niece and flung open her room door. She was so excited and thrilled that she was almost jumping up and down. I'm guessing she didn't get a lot of sleep last night (unless the paint fumes took her down).
We called my nephew up to see his sister's room and he was suitably impressed even though he really just wanted to watch TV. His door was shut and he started to head into his room. My sister said, "What do you think is going on in there?"
He opened the door and said, "Whoa!"
We pointed out some of the details and he thanked my sister for his new room, then headed downstairs to get his Spongebob fix after about a minute. Hey, he's five.
Today is my last vacation day from work and I'm still in labor mode. I've thoroughly vacuumed my office, the studio and the hallway, washed dishes, done some laundry and I'm about to tackle sweeping and mopping the basement floor. I need to learn how to do this "vacation" thing better.
So how was your weekend?
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