Before

So this is what I've been working on for the past two weeks. The big project that's kept me off-line all this time. As soon as I finished the mudroom, I started clearing out Elder Miss's room to be repainted, remodeled and reinvented as Boy and Missy's shared room. It's much bigger than the one they've been sharing up until now. It just doesn't seem right having Elder Miss all alone in this great big room, while the two little ones are cramped together in the small room. Plus, as you can see, it's well over due for a bit of a make over. That patch in the ceiling represents the last vestiges of the old house the way it was before we lifted the roof and added the second floor. It was a hatch that held a hidden ladder that led up into the attic where 612 bats used to sleep and shit in blissful harmony--to say nothing of the mice. How much do I love living in the country?

Anyway, the ceiling has looked like this for four years because we're lazy. And also, I thought maybe the way it looked kind of like piano keys would seep into her subconscience while she slept, and somehow make her into a wildly gifted, if lazy, musician. Or something.


I actually kind of choked up a little as I pulled this wallpaper off. I mean, I picked out this Bear Express border at Babies R' Us when I was but 6 months pregnant with EM. I drove Mister mad with my dithering and fretting and worrying over paint colors. Colors? What colors, you ask. Those are like two of the seven differnt shades of taupe you're allowed to color your stucco in the Utah suburbs. Nevertheless, Mister was ready to strangle me by the time I finally settled on them. And now *sigh* she's all grown up and asking for green walls with pink glittery curtains and Bratz sheets on the bed.


Rather than try to find exactly the right gender neutral shade of gender neutrality, I decided to split this wall down the middle and let the kids pick their own colors. Blue for Boy, purple for Missy. Done.


At this point, I still didn't have any clear idea of what I was going to do with the three remaining walls. I admit, while I was picking out blues that would go with purples, and purples that wouldn't overwhelm blues, I was also playing both against yellowy beiges and hoping to just leave well enough alone. But as soon as I got all that other color into the room, that yellowy beige became just plain yellow. And the whole thing felt like a faulty Easter Egg. I ultimately struck upon the solution to my dilemma from the old sheets I was using as drop cloths.


Grey! Of course. All that and gender neutral too. Just so you know, Elder Miss lobbied hard to keep the blue painter's tape on the door. She thought it was really classy looking that way.