Painting Begins

I found the memory card so the pictures are now on the computer. I took a bunch of random pictures around the house. Later DH took pictures in a more methodical process. The unfortunate part is that the battery died as he reached the last two rooms. Of course, those are the first two rooms that we painted. Perhaps he wasn't so well planned after all. We've just painted the walls and the closets so far. We haven't done any trim, partly because I'm not sure what colours I want yet, partly because we'll be replacing the windows this summer anyway and partly because I'm lazy and I can overlook the trim for a while as long as the walls look decent.

We'll have to settle for my 'before' pictures.

This is the girls' room. Yes, it was like that when we moved in. I guess someone tried to get rid of the blue but didn't have much success. No, I don't get the blue square around the light.

This is after. We haven't done the ceiling yet but we'll get to it. The walls are the sky and grassy hills. My 11 year old will be painting horses in the field at some point. We may also do a tree and some flowers. At least it looks much better than it did. It will be neat to see when it's all done.

The other room that has been painted is our bedroom. Our bedroom was probably the best looking but I'm so tired of having a white bedroom. I want it my colour.

Orange!!!! I LOVE orange! It's so bright and cheery.

So, I learned some things with this painting experience. The major lesson is that if you decide to use leftover paint from the previous owner be very careful to check the label . . . and then check it again. I was sure that the paint that I used in the girls' closet said latex. I was wondering why it smelled so bad while I was putting it on . . . and why it didn't seem to want to come off my hands with just soap and water. I looked at the label again and saw the dreaded word "alkyd". So they got to camp out in their brother's room for a couple more days. Thankfully it was fairly mild so I opened their window (of course I had just put the plastic insulation on so that had to come off a bit). I also found out about getting rid of the smell with sliced onions in a bowl of water. Then I learned that rotting onions in a bowl of water smell a lot like alkyd paint. Fun stuff! But the girls are in their own room now in their own bed (a bunk-bed generously given to us by my sister - who has been storing it in her basement for a year, waiting for us to move).

Tomorrow DH goes to get our belongings out of the storage unit.