Our Special Project

I have had a number of days in a row off from work this week. Maya and Elias are off from school as well. We had a special project planned and we finished it yesterday.

Since I moved into this house I have not really liked the 2nd floor room. It is one long room that runs the length of the house with one larger (12' x 12' approx.) open area at one end. The acoustic tile ceilings are slanted and have dozens of water marks. The roof was replaced a few years before I bought the house so there aren't any new water marks at least. The walls are wood paneling (yuck) and the floor is old grungy looking linoleum tiles. I checked under the linoleum and found only wood sub flooring so we are stuck with the linoleum for a while longer. Elias and Maya moved to the upstairs bedroom last winter, leaving Hannah on the main floor with me. Over the summer the kids switched rooms again. Now just the girls are upstairs and Elias and I are on the main floor. Some days the kids all play upstairs but it hasn't been a very homey feeling place. Until yesterday.

Yesterday we painted. Just the large open end of the room that the girls beds are in. For now it is white, but is is so much brighter and cheerful than the ugly brown. We even covered up the icky water stains on the ceiling. I forgot to take before pictures so I'll just give you a little idea about the walls, and ceiling based on the other end of the room (please excuse the mess we still have a lot of organizing to do).

Here is what the girls' room looks like now.

We did have a rather (ahem) large mishap during the painting process. I spilled paint on the only part of the rug that had come uncovered. I should have rolled up the rug and moved it out of the room before we started painting but I thought we were, literally, covered. The mess, you might notice, is just under Maya's bed near the window. I've already wasted too many tears on the mess. It is just a rug, a rug that continually gives away blue wool fluff to anyone wearing black fleece clothing. The fluff fills up the vacuum cleaner every time I vacuum. I can't figure it out. We have had the rug for almost 2 years.

One last thing about the room. There is a blank corner of the room to the bottom right of the pictures. One wall is about 6' long and the other is about 3' long plus a closet door. I'm going to put a desk in there for Maya. If I showed you this area right now in a picture all you would see is blank white walls and an ugly floor. So you'll have to wait a little longer until we get that part done. It does make a good excuse to visit IKEA. (Like I need a good excuse.)