Let There Be Paint

We finally finished painting in the nursery. Can I hear a hallelujah?!

A special thanks to my lovely husband who primed the two blue walls and to my (also lovely) friend Heather who came over on her day off and helped me slap on the paint and stay motivated to finish. I love the way it turned out and was excited to discover that using a dark color didn't suddenly make the room look like the Batcave; in a way it actually makes it look a little brighter, go figure. I am glad that we chose to pair it with a light gray...I'm really liking how the two play off of each other.

Of course like any decent project, this one didn't go down without its hiccups, despite our best intentions. There was a little of this:

I won't name names, but this was caused by a certain male in the house.

And a little lot of that:

It turns out that, even when using frog tape, it's important to take the time and crease the seal with your nail or another firm object so that the paint doesn't bleed through. Duh. Once I discovered my oversight (which of course happened to the [dark] blue walls first), I made sure to take the extra time when taping for the gray walls, which paid off - I had no bleed through on those baseboards. So...user error, big time. And note to self: test things with the lighter paint next time!

Due to the fact that 1. I forgot to ask Charles to tape the ceiling on the two gray walls and 2. Heather and I were both far shorter than we needed to be to do the job ourselves, the gray walls looked like this for about a week:

...until I was able to borrow a step ladder from my parents and finish 'er up.

Also, a word about paint quantity. I undershot a bit lot on how much paint we would need. A full gallon of each color would have been great to have (remember, I only bought 2 quarts of each...), though it would have made things a little less interesting as there would have been a lot less nail biting and silent rants in my head. In the end, two quarts was just enough to do one coat plus touch-ups. Not exactly ideal. It actually worked out better for the blue walls (even though they were solid walls not broken up by doors or windows) because the primer didn't allow the walls to soak up as much paint, so we had more to play with. The gray walls, despite having one window and two large doors, used far more paint for the first coat and I was scraping the barrel to finish painting the "bald" spots. They're not perfect, but I got most of the obvious ones (and ignored some in the corner behind the door). My normally perfectionistic self is actually okay with it. Bring on parenthood! Ha.

One last tip that ended up being a quick and easy way to bring some freshness to the the room - the outlet plates. I took most of them off (except for the ones for the phone jack and cable) before we painted the walls and noticed how gross they were. Observe:

My camera does not adequately capture their grossness

They had paint caked on around the edges, who knows how many years of grime and were just overall lackluster. And against my crisp blue and gray walls, I wanted them to pop! So I washed them. It's amazing how easy paint comes off of plastic, especially with some soap, hot water and a rough sponge. And afterwards they were looking much better:

To the left: Grody McGroderson; To the right: Mr. Clean!

A quick and super easy fix...though be sure to let them dry completely before putting them back on so there's no accidental shock action.

So now that the painting is done we have to:

• Set up the crib (my wonderful mother and step-dad got it for us and it should be in this week!)
• Fix up the dresser (I finally found one...more on that soon!)
• Finish the mobile
• Possibly find a twin bed for guests/those late night visits to the nursery - however this might be a "Phase 2" project
• Make/buy curtains

And a bunch of other little things that are escaping me. And we only have 5 1/2 weeks to go! Assuming the little guy doesn't decide to come early, which I'm starting to think he might just to throw a wrench into things :)