I've always wanted a magnetic personality...
I debated several titles for this post, and the meaning of the above one will become clear later in this story :-).
Remember this summer's impromptu make-over of our office into Scott's room? He went away to Boy Scout camp and we decided to give him his own room while he was gone.
Well, he loves it, but moving him into his own room meant leaving his brother alone in the biggest child's bedroom we have, while the two girls share the smallest room. And girls have stuff. Lots of it. Like the dollhouse my grandfather built for my mom and my daughters now have. Or the baby dolls and crib that keep Sari entertained. Or the polly dolls. Or Littlest Pet Shop. You get the idea. BUT, the summer was rapidly drawing to a close, we still haven't found a home for everything that came out of the "office" and now clutters our family room, and homeschool was needing desperately to start up again. So the bedroom rearranging would just have to wait.
Until Tropical Storm Fay.
See, the room the girls shared was an old porch that was enclosed, and when that happened, they filled the "scuppers" that had allowed water to drain off the porch, but were unnecessary for a bedroom, especially since they are really just holes in the wall. Well, Apparently the patch job wasn't meant to last for decades, and water came in and flooded the carpet. The problem is that Mimi and I were gone and Sari doesn't really sleep in there, so no one knew the carpet had gotten wet until the smell gave it away. By then, it was too late, and there was mold growing ON the carpet under the doll house. Of course, the extent of the damage did not exceed our insurance deductible, so we were left to deal with it ourselves.
Having several members of the family being highly allergic to mold, we decided to rip out the carpet. And since that required removing all the furniture...you know where this is going, don't you...yep, we decided to switch the bedrooms.
But, of course, that means a total makeover for the girls' old room to make it less girly (TJ's not big on lilac paint). He's chosen a shade of grayish blue seen here (at the top) in just a small test patch, although the color doesn't really come through well.
Here's what the room basically looks like.
And then there was the flooring dilemma. We aren't sure ultimately what we want to do with the flooring in the house, but since we DO have horrible allergies, we knew carpet was not an option. So we decided to stain the concrete for now. Which seemed easy. Until. Well, until you really take a look at the floor:
This is what it looked like. Paint splotches everywhere, and glue from the carpet padding adhesive stuck to the floor. 2 different seriously strong solvents and a few thousand less braincells later, this is what it looks like:
That was literally the entirety of what I spent last Sunday and the week-end before that doing.
Allow me to skip for a minute to the post title. Since this room was a former porch, there is a window that was closed in in the middle of the longest wall. There's no way to hide it, so we decided to paint it red...figuratively. Really, we are painting it with magnetic paint with chalkboard paint over that. It should be cool when it's done. But anyone who knows me knows I paint pretty well, but I'm...well...messy. And I was doing SO WELL with this paint because a tee-niney pint of it cost $20. Until the very last section to be painted with the last of 3 coats. Apparently while rolling the section right before that, I had stepped in a small splotch of paint that had spilled when I poured paint from the can to the tray. And hey, did you know it was fast drying? And magnetic? So when I stepped in it, and then stood there while I was painting, it dried and stuck to my shoe...and when I moved to load the roller for the last pass, the drop cloth came with me, and it tipped the paint over, and ARG!!! crazy, expensive, BLACK paint all over. In my shoe. On my foot. And all over the drop cloth. Luckily, the drop cloth was an old vinyl table cloth, so I was able to salvage quite a bit of what spilled (come on, you guys know how frugal I am, LOL). But As I bellowed for my husband's help, he sat oblivious watching some horrible movie called V for Vendetta. I've got a vendetta for you...JUST KIDDING! I managed to clean it up and hop out of the room painted foot and all without getting black magnetic paint anywhere else it should not have been. But while I've always wanted to be one of those people with a magnetic personality, painting myself magnetic wasn't the solution I had in mind.
I'll finish more about the room makeover tomorrow, but the next installment, entitled, "It's good we don't have goats" ought to pique your interest :-).
Remember this summer's impromptu make-over of our office into Scott's room? He went away to Boy Scout camp and we decided to give him his own room while he was gone.
Well, he loves it, but moving him into his own room meant leaving his brother alone in the biggest child's bedroom we have, while the two girls share the smallest room. And girls have stuff. Lots of it. Like the dollhouse my grandfather built for my mom and my daughters now have. Or the baby dolls and crib that keep Sari entertained. Or the polly dolls. Or Littlest Pet Shop. You get the idea. BUT, the summer was rapidly drawing to a close, we still haven't found a home for everything that came out of the "office" and now clutters our family room, and homeschool was needing desperately to start up again. So the bedroom rearranging would just have to wait.
Until Tropical Storm Fay.
See, the room the girls shared was an old porch that was enclosed, and when that happened, they filled the "scuppers" that had allowed water to drain off the porch, but were unnecessary for a bedroom, especially since they are really just holes in the wall. Well, Apparently the patch job wasn't meant to last for decades, and water came in and flooded the carpet. The problem is that Mimi and I were gone and Sari doesn't really sleep in there, so no one knew the carpet had gotten wet until the smell gave it away. By then, it was too late, and there was mold growing ON the carpet under the doll house. Of course, the extent of the damage did not exceed our insurance deductible, so we were left to deal with it ourselves.
Having several members of the family being highly allergic to mold, we decided to rip out the carpet. And since that required removing all the furniture...you know where this is going, don't you...yep, we decided to switch the bedrooms.
But, of course, that means a total makeover for the girls' old room to make it less girly (TJ's not big on lilac paint). He's chosen a shade of grayish blue seen here (at the top) in just a small test patch, although the color doesn't really come through well.
Here's what the room basically looks like.And then there was the flooring dilemma. We aren't sure ultimately what we want to do with the flooring in the house, but since we DO have horrible allergies, we knew carpet was not an option. So we decided to stain the concrete for now. Which seemed easy. Until. Well, until you really take a look at the floor:
This is what it looked like. Paint splotches everywhere, and glue from the carpet padding adhesive stuck to the floor. 2 different seriously strong solvents and a few thousand less braincells later, this is what it looks like:
That was literally the entirety of what I spent last Sunday and the week-end before that doing.
Allow me to skip for a minute to the post title. Since this room was a former porch, there is a window that was closed in in the middle of the longest wall. There's no way to hide it, so we decided to paint it red...figuratively. Really, we are painting it with magnetic paint with chalkboard paint over that. It should be cool when it's done. But anyone who knows me knows I paint pretty well, but I'm...well...messy. And I was doing SO WELL with this paint because a tee-niney pint of it cost $20. Until the very last section to be painted with the last of 3 coats. Apparently while rolling the section right before that, I had stepped in a small splotch of paint that had spilled when I poured paint from the can to the tray. And hey, did you know it was fast drying? And magnetic? So when I stepped in it, and then stood there while I was painting, it dried and stuck to my shoe...and when I moved to load the roller for the last pass, the drop cloth came with me, and it tipped the paint over, and ARG!!! crazy, expensive, BLACK paint all over. In my shoe. On my foot. And all over the drop cloth. Luckily, the drop cloth was an old vinyl table cloth, so I was able to salvage quite a bit of what spilled (come on, you guys know how frugal I am, LOL). But As I bellowed for my husband's help, he sat oblivious watching some horrible movie called V for Vendetta. I've got a vendetta for you...JUST KIDDING! I managed to clean it up and hop out of the room painted foot and all without getting black magnetic paint anywhere else it should not have been. But while I've always wanted to be one of those people with a magnetic personality, painting myself magnetic wasn't the solution I had in mind.
I'll finish more about the room makeover tomorrow, but the next installment, entitled, "It's good we don't have goats" ought to pique your interest :-).
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