Painting sucks. Really, it sucks. I hate it. I absolutely loathe painting. Even more than painting, I utterly despise taping a room off in preparation to paint. That is one of the worst forms of torture. I’d rather have my fingernails ripped out. I hate it that much. Nevertheless, the nursery had to be painted and even though Rebecca’s doctor said she would be fine to paint the room, I didn’t think it was a great idea. Not so much for the paint fumes (the kid’s gotta get used to that if she’s going to live in this house which only has one room left that’s builder’s-grade off-white), but more for the action of using the roller and being on ladders, etc. So, we enlisted help in the form of Madi’s Papaw and Mamaw, along with an Uncle and Aunt, and got to work. The colors were decided on (green with pink stripes), the paint was purchased late Friday evening and the taping process began. Have I gotten the point across just how much I HATE to tape a room off? I think it’s the perfectionist in me and I get frustrated trying to make everything absolutely perfectly straight. When it was time to paint the living room and main hallway, I opted to cut and hang crown moulding rather than tape off the ceiling. That alone should illustrate my hatred for painter’s tape. Regardless, up on the chair I went to tape off the parts nobody else could reach. Why is it that I have to be the tallest one? I’m only 6′, it’s not like I’m Shaquille O’ Neal or anything. The coat of green went on first thing Saturday. It only took one coat. If you’re painting, you really should get Kilz brand paint. They say “one coat” and they mean it!

With the green coat done, it came time to begin the process of taping off the areas that would become the pink stripes. The templates were made with care, although one disappeared and I’m positive Lily took it out into the yard and shredded it. Good dog. We started at one corner of the room and went all the way around it, marking off a foot of green, then space for a 3-inch vertical pink stripe, then another foot of green, another pink stripe, and so on and so forth. I make this sound MUCH simpler than it really was. We started this taping process (also known as the torture that even a Turkish prison won’t use because it makes the guards squeamish) at around 10:00 on Saturday night, thinking we’d knock out the taping in an hour or so (HA!) and then get up early Sunday morning to paint. Somehow (ie: the instinctual desire of a human female to paint something, anything, that is deemed needing a coat of paint), we ended up deciding to paint just a few of the stripes to see how the pink was going to look. Although it went on a shade much like Pepto Bismol, it quickly dried to a nice lighter, non-Pepto shade. Even though it was approaching midnight, only an idiot would have stopped for some sleep! Not us! No sirree. We kept right on going, all the way around that room and at 4:58AM the last piece of tape was removed, around 30 stripes were done and 3 VERY tired painters went to bed (Rebecca was sent to bed at 3AM when she was found lying on the floor in a state of sleeplessness dementia). When we all got up the next morning, furniture was arranged and all was right in the land, and it was good. It looks great. Really great. All the torture was worth it. We decided that it looked like a garden and thusly named the room “Madi’s Garden”. The only things we’ve got left to do to the nursery is stain the dresser to match the bed, and purchase a small bookcase (with parents like us, the girl’s definitely going to love to read) and stain it the same. Once that’s done, we’ll just sit back and wait on the kid to pop right out like a hot pop-tart.

Enough talk, here are the pictures:

View from the doorway

Dresser and basket full of stuffed animals

Windowseat / temporary bookshelf

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