Yes, I know the room is cool. I am totally in love with the change. Even the mint green, which horrified me at first, has grown on me and seems to be just the right accent color for this room. HOWEVER-this room gets the "longest project ever" award. When the painters gave me a bid of $1600 (?%#%!$), I flat refused to even respond. It was a complete insult to my intelligence. When the second bid was $1000, I thought-it must be a sign-we are just going to paint it ourselves. I think the reason for the high bid was the fact that we were covering neon pink...but still....
This time I decided to try the paint with primer already in it, and that helped tremendously. Excited about the project, I got our first gallon from Lowes, and woke up to a blue (not gray) room. Unsurprised at Lowes paint guide, Benjamin Moore was my first stop the next morning, knowing that a true and good gray only lives at Benjamin Moore.
Mackenzie, Megan, Bea, and I started painting like wild cats. Max painted more like a siberian husky, getting it all in his fur and rolling around on other various new furniture in the house.
I drove up to the Pottery Barn outlet three times (a 45 minute commute-one way), while the group excitedly painted. I would come home to do hard parts like ceiling in a lighter gray and dismantling hardware, only to run back up to PB Kids....but we finally made it. We got it painted. We got the new bedding put on. We got the desk set up with cute pencil holders and task lights. We went to Target and TJ Maxx. We went back to all of the places to make returns.
I just sewed up the second curtain today, which means three trips were made to Joann Fabrics as I could not accept that mint was the actual accent color and was drawn to the more turquoise color on one of the swirls of the bedding. Taking Megan with me helped eliminate guesswork.
Tonight, I am hand sewing around the seat cushion for the office chair as my sewing machine and I have had a horrific wrestling match for the last three hours. Thankful for the stomach bug and kids in bed so I could work, we still never came to terms and I found sewing with a needle and listening to my audiobook: Boys in the Boat more relaxing anyway,
Reading to the kids tonight, I was lying in the newly fabulous bed and noticed the air vent in the bathroom was still taped with green tape.
Excitement is waning by this point. I trudge up the ladder and pull off the tape, exposing a bit of pink paint from the last painters, not caring by this point, and hoping that's the last green tape still up. Texts are still flooding in for the last Disney princess bed-a full. Everyone wants a twin, but wants to discuss the full and maybe have me deliver it to their house??? Hmm. Maybe a new craigslister. Doesn't know this is convenient for me, and a great deal for you.
The weather, still clammy, provides the perfect excuse for a home project. No temptation to be anywhere but the house, scraping paint fragments off the floor, and hand sewing cushions are actually a bit comforting; reminds me of a time when my mom decided to stencil down a hallway of our Nacogdoches house.
I remembered looking up. She had handkerchief on her head and was very deliberately and carefully holding a cardboard cut for the purpose of stencil. She has always been methodical and this event was no different. Balancing on the top of a ladder, pressing the stencil against the wall, she pressed paint against the cardboard. She would only get two or three going, then need to come down and move her ladder. It was quite a hallway, and she seemed to enjoy the art.
Something was pressed into me at the moment. It marked a memory in my mind, something good about it. I think it was the effort poured into a hallway. An otherewise, inane place for a seven year old child, just a road to get to one's room, my mother had painted something special into it. She had made beauty. This beauty stuck with me, and years later, I find myself doing the same thing. Pressing beauty into walls...making our children's nest, our abode....lovely.
No comments:
Post a Comment