An ending for the Never ending Paint Story

Before I start this story, let me start by telling you that I normally really enjoying painting. My mom and I have painted dozens of rooms together in our life time. It’s always enjoyable. I love the instant gratification I receive when I put the new paint color on the wall. It’s an instant pick-me-up for a room, and it doesn’t cost a ton of money.

This story is not like those other dozen paint stories.

My mom wasn’t my painting partner this time. With my dad being so sick lately and her long list of things to complete in her house before my baby shower, Christian stepped up to be my painting buddy. Although I’m glad my mom is taking great care of my dad and is having the baby shower at her house, she was missed. Christian was a great painting buddy too!

Christian and I started painting Chet’s bedroom two weekends ago. We bought the paint on Saturday, and we got busy painting on Sunday. Before we could even get paint up on the walls, we had to move the last of the non-baby items out of the room. Christian’s dresser is now in our bedroom. The rest is piled up in our front room (I’ll work on that room on a rainy day in the future!).

Ready for Paint

Before my 2nd trimester even started, I knew the “theme” we wanted for our baby room. I prefer things to be gender neutral so it was easy to day dream without knowing the sex of the baby. You can read about my motivation here. I also knew I wanted to incorporate the feeling of the ocean in the baby’s room. While watching Design Star one night, I saw painted walls I had to have in our baby’s room. It looked easy enough. I was sold.

Wall Inspiration

Step 1: Paint tan on the bottom half of the walls 

Our first Sunday painting, we started with the bottom sand color. There was no instant gratification with this paint color. As I edged and Christian rolled, I started to have my doubts. Should it be darker? Did I really like it? Did we waste money on a gallon of paint that was hardly any different then what was already on the walls?

Look closely...the bottom half is a new color

Although the color change isn’t dramatic, the quality of paint is drastically different. Our entire house was painted with the neutral paint tone before it was put up for sale. It has to be the cheapest quality paint ever. It’s honestly nothing more than a primer that covered up some really horrible paint choices before. The baby’s room was Bright Grass Green before according to the paint under the light switch.

I wasn’t sold on my great paint plan at this point, but I was committed to the process. There was no going back. We had bought the paint. I needed to see the final product before I made up my mind.

Next step: Blue Paint on the top half of the walls

I swear I'm going to "lose" that tank top one day in the laundry

I still wasn’t sold on paint colors at this point. Was the blue too baby blue? I wanted crisp not pastel. There was no turning back. The entire room was now painted. All that was left was the two stripes around the center of the walls.

Too blue? Not tan enough? (ignore my finger over the lens!)

We called it a night after finishing up the blue paint. I was tired, and I was sick of painting with colors I wasn’t sure I liked.

I had big hopes of painting a little bit each night of the week, but life got busy. I didn’t get back into the room to paint until Thursday.

Step 3: Paint the white strip

I bought a new small roller for this task. I thought a roller would provide more even coverage than a paint brush. I was able to get two coats of paint up on the walls Thursday night. Once the white got up on the walls, I started to like the blue and the tan a lot more. The white seemed to balance out the other two colors. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a disaster after all?

Slowly coming together

Saturday morning came around. I was anxious to get the painting done. I was ready to peel back the tape, admire my straight white lines and add the final touch. I was ready for the navy blue stripe.

True to my typical anxious self, I head into the Chet’s room before Christian was ready to start his morning. I started to peel back the tape. DISASTER! The crisp white lines I was envisioning were nowhere to be seen. It looked like I had hand painted the lines. In fact, I probably could have hand painted them more successfully.

Christian tried to come to my rescue. He had tons of solutions. I wasn’t hearing any of them. I was done. If the light blue paint had already been out, I would have instantly started painting the whole room baby blue.

Needless to say, I didnt’ take any pictures. I was to busy having a melt-down that looked something like this:

By Saturday evening, I had myself back under control.

Step 4: Paint a new crisp light blue border to the white strip

Christian re-taped of the white line. I repainted blue paint on top of the white line. This time I used a brush. I think the roller put too much paint on the walls, and it seeped under the painter’s tape.

Step 5: Paint the navy blue strip

Christian also taped off the borders for the blue strip. This color had me more nervous than any of the other colors. If we messed up on this one, it would be hard to cover up with another color. I painted a VERY light first coat of the navy blue paint. Since it needed to dry for 8 hours (according to the paint employees), we retired our paint brushes for the night.

Sunday morning I woke up anxious. I painted the second coat of paint, and we waited……….

By Sunday afternoon, we were ready to take off the tape. Fingers were crossed. I didn’t want to look.

First corner to get peeled back

While the first peel wasn’t perfect, it was doable. It was also a 100% improvement from the paint the day before. As we pulled back more and more tape, it actually became okay. If you stand right next to the walls and scrutinize the paint, it is far from perfect. If you take a step back and look at the whole room, I think it turned out pretty good.

Final Product

I was more than happy to put away the paint cans, rinse out our brushes, and get our house back to normal.  Even though I was unsure of the entire process, I really do love the final product. Chet’s bedroom is one step closer to feeling like home to me.

Not only did the paint turn out better than I had anticipated, but I was also surprised to discover that I now like the curtains in the room. I had it on my to-do list to sew new ones. I can scratch that one off the list. The current curtains work great!

Lessons Learned:

Not Perfect is actually great.

Overly ambitious paint projects might not be something I should tackle while pregnant.

How a projects start doesn’t necessarily reflect the final product. It’s important to have all the pieces of the puzzle in place before determining “like” or “dislike”.

Never use a roller when attempting to paint a straight line on a textured wall with painter’s tape.

My husband is a Saint (most of the time).

Almost ready for Chet