New Bedroom! Okay, it’s the same room we’ve been in for 23 years but I painted it. So it looks like new. Or it would, if the new wall color didn’t highlight how beat up and awful the trim is. Whatevs, I’ll get to the trim later. Jay was on a week long trip with the team and I’ve been planning on changing the wall color for a while. Perfect time to do it; he’s not here to get in the way or complain that all the bedroom furniture is in the living room for three days. The bedroom situation in this house is less than perfect. When we moved in, there were two bedrooms upstairs, two on the main floor and a room in the basement that was used as a bedroom but wasn’t really a legal bedroom until we put in the egress window about fifteen years ago. In fact, there really aren’t two bedrooms upstairs. There are two spaces and a full bath but the front space has no closet and you have to walk through it to get to the back room so it really can’t be considered a bedroom although we used it as one and so did the previous owners. The upstairs is actually a lovely master suite; a sleeping area, sitting room, walk in closet and full bath, taking up the entire floor. It just hasn’t been used that way in decades. The upstairs bedroom is the nicest in the house and clearly meant to be the master. Jay and I didn’t take that room when we moved in because I had to be between Zack and the door. Zack was two when we bought this house and he was nearly impossible to contain. There was no way in hell I was going to go to bed upstairs while Houdini the Toddler got out of his bed downstairs and took himself across the street to the park every night, which is what he would have done if I hadn’t been there. So my girls shared the best room in the house and Josie has had it all to herself since Katie went away to college twelve years ago. She doesn’t have the whole suite, of course; I took the front room and made it my office before Katie moved out. My plan for this house was always to eventually make the entire upstairs my office/studio. I could put skylights in the north facing dormer. It would be perfect! We’ll probably just sell this place when Josie graduates, though. Our bedroom is small. I don’t mind. I don’t really understand the current mode of huge master bedroom suites. Who needs a sitting area in the bedroom? Isn’t that what the rest of the house is for? Like a lot of kids, I used my bedroom as a hideout when I was a teenager. It was my refuge from the world, my own private space, where I could do my own thing and shut out the rest of the world. I read books, listened to music and drew and painted to my heart’s content. Now I’m an adult and I have an entire house for that. My bedroom is for sleeping and changing my clothes. About fifteen years ago I painted our room a medium brown. I was going for ‘dark as a cave’. I thought the color went well with our dark green and blue plaid comforter. It gave our room kind of a backwoods charm. I got dark green curtains to cover the windows. I liked it. Jay never did. I didn’t take it personally, since I hadn’t actually chosen the color; it was a gallon I picked out of Hirschfield’s free box. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars over the years by using free and deeply discounted paint. But it’s been years and I was tired of the brown, too. This time I did choose the color; Liveable Green by Sherwin Williams. It’s a very pretty, soft, nearly neutral green. I used their Cashmere line because it wasn’t terribly expensive and I don’t think it has any primer in it. Paint and primer in one is the worst. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until paint manufacturers get their heads out of their asses; paint is paint and primer is primer. It’s as if some moron decided to throw a can of frosting into the cake batter, thinking ‘now I won’t have to frost the cake!’ When you mix them, you don’t get both, you get neither. So STOP IT. You can’t just feed the tuna mayonnaise. Our bedroom is small but I suspect that it was originally two even smaller rooms; a porch and a closet. There’s a definite division where the walls and ceiling don’t match. I painted it one part at a time so I wouldn’t have to move all the furniture out at once. I just shoved the dressers away from the walls and left the bed. Of course, the curtains all had to come down. There are few things in real life more terrifying that discovering what hides behind your bedroom curtains. All I wanted to do was paint my room but instead I had to wash curtains, spackle holes, redrill the walls so I could someday rehang the curtains, dust the walls down, destroy acres of spider habitat and vacuum the carpet to within an inch of its life. I also found several pairs of shoes I hadn’t seen in years. I threw them all in the bag for ARC. When I finally got around to opening the can of paint, I was exhausted. But I persevered. As usual, I didn’t bother taping. Tape just makes me sloppy and with my good three inch Wooster, I can hold such a sharp edge, I don’t need no stinkin’ tape. I did use plenty of drop cloths, though. I don’t care how steady your hand is, paint drips. One coat of pale green in the morning and another late afternoon and I could shove all the furniture back against the walls by bedtime. The second day, I did the whole process again with the cubby where the bed fits. Filthy curtains, new screw anchors for the rods, dust the walls, kill the spiders and vacuum. It was harder than the first day since the vacuum had to be lifted over the bed, which was too big to shove out of the room; I just shoved it out of the way. Dropcloth the bed and the floor and paint. Fortunately, the weather was cool and breezy. On Sunday, it was hot and sticky but sometime before Monday morning, autumn arrived. All week long it was cloudy, breezy, wet and cool. We might have cracked 80 degrees once or twice but most of the week was in the high 60s, low 70s. I kept my windows open and there was no paint stink by the time I went to bed. Not that it mattered; I never sleep well when Jay’s gone. But I was too tired to toss and turn. I like the new color quite well. But I chose it to go with the green comforter and curtains and now I’m thinking I want new curtains. It’s not just the trim that looks old and beat up next to the fresh new paint. Jay looks like hell! Kidding. He looks fit, rested and relieved to have escaped the dinosaurs and returned to the first world. but he did take one look at the new walls and say "I'm buying a new comforter today." That lamp on my bedside table has to go, too. |
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