The weird thing about being so much older than my siblings (I was eleven when my sister was born and turned sixteen the day after my brother was born) is that I remember their entire lives. I actually picked both of their names! And the house my parents live in is nineteen years old (the same age as my other sister) so all three of my youngest siblings were newborns in the same house.
This room was the nursery my youngest sister was brought home to, decorated with sky blue paint and sponged-on clouds. In the fourteen years that have passed, the paint hasn't changed, even though it's been a virtual revolving door of room inhabitants.
But now, enough kids have moved out of their house that my parents are able to have a guest room for the first time since my brother and I were babies, and they want to turn the biggest room into the guest room. Unfortunately, my baby brother is still living in the biggest room all by himself, so some changes were in order...
First: moving my brother into the smallest room. This is where we started on Tuesday.
It's needed a makeover for a while (a nine-year-old boy is already a bit too old for whimsical clouds and light blue paint, plus he's a big fan of the color red) and there was nineteen years' worth of nail holes and my other brother's anger management issues to patch up.
Those are all posters left over from my 11-month stint in this room--the Prada posters were nicked from my old job, the "Keep Calm" poster was found at World Market, and yes, every house I will ever live in will have Florida State stuff in it, I'm pretty unapologetic about that. (At least garnet and gold are good, versatile colors.)
The dresser was stained by my dad in 1989. I'd love nothing more than to paint it white but my mum is pretty sure my dad would hate that. The black desk totally obscured by old pillows and boxes is from Target.
The dark wood entertainment center used to live in our family room. This guy got the star treatment, but that's a post for another day.
You'd think the Phineas and Ferb poster was my brother's, but no.. it was mine. It was the only poster that was salvaged from this room (the rest got too wrinkled or ripped) so he's going to re-hang it once he moves in. And that's my mum's abandoned Oreck, since she upgraded to a Dyson (with the proper amount of suction!) for her birthday.
The day my brother found out he was getting a new room, he moved into it. On an air mattress.
And of course, it wouldn't be our house if we weren't displaying our love for Shinedown as much as possible. (That's a really old picture, you can tell because my cousin's dreadlocks are only down to his elbows and not his hips.)
So now that we've recapped the complete disaster area that is the smallest room in the house, it's time to get down to work!
First, Mr. Cheddar and his brother (who were sitting out back enjoying tasty alcoholic beverages with my dad) graciously moved the huge ugly entertainment center out into the hallway. Meanwhile, my brother Shane was cleaning up his mess.
I worked on getting down the posters, then vacuuming, then moving the leftover furniture to the middle of the room and covering it with an old paint-splattered sheet. Mum was busy taping the things she wanted left untouched by primer. This took quite a while, so night had already fallen over the land before I was ready to get started on the good stuff.
And what, you may ask, is "the good stuff"?
SPACKLING, of course!
It's been years since I've spackled--I think the last time I did it was when I helped my mum paint MY childhood bedroom. I'm talking mid-1990's. Since then, I've only painted rooms where I didn't care about filling in small nail holes, so I never splurged for spackle.
Imagine my surprise and delight to open the spackle container and find pink spackle. This is possibly old news to everyone else, but I had no idea the technology had come this far. It turns white when it's dry! Like those Coors beer cans that turn blue when they're cold!
I tend to get all ravenous over spackle in the first place--it's the stuff of miracles. You can transform a pockmarked wall into a smooth, flawless surface. But now they've improved it even more, it's amazing! SPACKLE IS AMAZING.
I had so much fun sanding down the spackle, too. I'm a total dork and I accept that. After the spackling was done, we called it a night. Some of the deeper marks were still pink, so we figured we'd give it a good 12 hours to cure up.
The next day, my brother had a completely separate project:
That's the soon-to-be guest room. This is going to be a huge undertaking, partially because of the mess and clutter, but also because there are stickers EVERYWHERE. I didn't notice the ceiling fan until long after I was done taking pictures, but those little star stickers we used to get in grade school? There are at least 100 of those on the five blades of the ceiling fan.
So, motivated solely by the prospect of moving into his own room by the end of the week, he set to work on his mess.
My sister had begged for the entertainment center project, and both of our parents were at work, so that left me with the unenviable task of priming the bedroom.
I wasn't impressed.
I tried Olympic's "Problem-Solving" primer for the first time, and it was stiiiiinky. Everyone who came in the house that day asked why it smelled like wet dog. I got it in an attempt to avoid the strong smell of regular paint primer, but I'd rather smell strong primer than wet dog.
Also, the coverage wasn't great. I know part of it is because the blue is so bright, but the Valspar primer hid the high-gloss olive green in our bathroom just fine.
Needless to say, I was sweating bullets about the actual color we'd chosen, which I'd gotten color matched in Olympic paint.
At one point I looked down and found this guy hiding out by my chair.
His name is Bear, and he's my parents' dog. He's half Labrador, half Boykin spaniel. Yes, he is as tiny as he looks.
But finally, after two coats of primer, things were looking decidedly less blue.
My mortal body had grown weak, however. It required sustenance!
Enter Mr. Cheddar and a life-saving iced caramel macchiato. And that was perfect, because...
The chosen paint color was Valspar's Signature "Skinny Latte," color-matched to Olympic brand paint. The paint was mostly odorless, thankfully.
I was in charge of edges and corners with my short-handled angled brush. Along the ceiling was a challenge, I've never edged freehand and popcorn ceilings are... awful.
But I did pretty well!
The color is a bit dark (that's why we were doing super-secret things to the dark wood entertainment center) but not oppressive. It's not baby-poop brown like our back hallway was, and in person, it's more latte-colored than brown. Like, picture this color with a little more cream added.
(I know, the pixellation is melodramatic, but I don't want to spoil what we did to the entertainment center just yet!)
I'll be honest, I was feeling very anti-beige throughout this process. That back hallway really burned me, and grays seem more agreeable to me. It's easy to warm up and cool down gray walls, but beige is always warm.
But I like how this turned out. My brother is a big fan of red, which will complement this color just fine, and it's also a great color for a growing kid.
And once all the painter's tape came off:
Not bad, eh? Now do you see why I so badly wanted to paint that dresser? But it won't be so bad once we get all the furniture moved in.
And if you look closely at that bottom left picture...
Yep, we streamed Parks and Rec on my phone for three days. We made it halfway through the second season!
Comparison shots? Sure!
This was arguably the easy part... my mum still has to go through that messy room and clean it all out before it's in any shape to be painted. Hopefully it gets done this weekend so that I can pick up that roller again on Monday and get back to work!
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