I wasn't listening.

Today, I'm talking to James and Jayden. "GO PLAY". I wasn't really yelling, just talking loudly. I tell Jayden "Izzy is napping, you need to be quiet and go play." James comes in to the office and starts talking about something or the other, most likely video games.
"How can I help you?"
"I just want to tell you this one thing."
"Is the baby sleeping?"
"Yes, but it's just one thing."
"What did I JUST tell Jayden?"
"I wasn't listening."

Well, at least he's honest, right? Things have been interesting around here to say the least the past few days. Some of it I'm willing to share, some of it I'm not. If you are one of the few who know, well then it doesn't need repeating here.

The girls' bedroom. I am beginning to regret the mere idea of painting it. Ok, we live in an old house (have I said this before?). Built in 1889 or something like that. At some point, someone stripped the paint to the plaster and put up wallpaper, at least I *think* that is what happened because there just isn't enough "stuff" on the walls to account for 100+ years of decorating. The wallpaper peels up pretty easily, in most areas of the house. It has been painted over with good old laytex. White laytex at that. In the girls' room is a completely different case, kind of. Oh, the wallpaper is there, there is also a layer of grey primer.

So, I was sitting down, by one of the windows in the girls' room to wash the window and the wall to get it ready to paint. Ooh, there are some air bubbles in the paint. It won't hurt to take those out and smooth out the paint because i'll be painting over it all anyway. Well, my smoothing out air bubbles turns in to a HUGE piece of paint coming off in my hand. Oh hell. It just keeps coming and coming off. Crap. Under this paint is a layer of grey dust, and primer, and then wallpaper, and then the original plaster walls. Oh goody.

So I get the flea brained notion in my head to strip all the walls of the paint, it's coming off easily enough. Then wash them, and paint them over. *sigh*. Not so simple. Some parts of the paint are really still VERY stuck on. It makes a HUGE mess. The dust is so thick, it needs to be scraped off before washing it, or I'd wind up with a bucket of mud. Ok, I've got three full walls done. I mean, stripped of paint. In one corner, I have them repainted, which took 3 coats of paint. In another corner I have the wall scraped and washed. In another corner (there are quite a few corners in this room, about 6 I think because the room has a little bit of an L shape to it) the wall is just scraped.

The just scraped wall now has a HUGE drywall patch on it. Bigger than the first time. When the paint was stripped from that wall, the wallpaper came with it. In no other part of the room has the wallpaper come down as well. Under the wall paper is a huge area of crumbling plaster. Jason uses drywal fabric and plaster to patch the hole. As I was scraping the dust off of the wall, the patch came off, with more. So now the hole is even bigger. I'm going to wash AROUND the patch, and then paint over all of it, though over the patch I think I'll use the brush instead of the roller.

There are still 2 more corners of the room, and those still have the original white paint, nothing has even been stripped there. So the walls with the pretty peach paint on them look fantastic. Very girly and nice. As if I didn't have enough to do already, I'm adding sponge stencils, in three different colors as a border on the walls. It will go from the ceiling, down the corners and around each door and window frame. What am I thinking? Oh yeah, the girls will LOVE it. I get that, however, I am creating tons of work for myself.

Yes, the kids want to "help". Their version of helping involves 1/2 a bucket of paint spilled on the carpet (good thing the landlord didn't replace the carpet upstairs), dragging paint pieces to other parts of the house, and playing "swords" with the scrapers. Not much help at all.

So here it is about 12:30 in the morning, and I'm up and around because I have been working on the girls' room. It will look fantastic when it is done, and maybe by then I'll have figured out how to post pics to share. However, until it is done, it is a headache and so much more effort than I bargained for. By the way, does anyone have any kind of pattern for an over the bed canopy? You know, the kind that is a circle at the top, hangs from the ceiling, and drapes over the head of the bed? I am going to make two of those, one for each girl. I have tulle out the wazoo, left over wedding decs, so I figure I could put it to good use finally. I've seen pics of them, the canopies, and they seem easy enough to make. However, that's what I said about the girls' room. "Two, three days tops and it'll be done." HAH!