A True Story With a Happy Ending

 A long, long, long time ago- way back in 2008- Mxyl and Klenda painted the fishy bathroom.

It was great!  I had painted the room pale blue, with a translucent blue overlay that suggested water on the bottom half.

They put up little wallpaper cut outs of fish.

They painted seaweed and fish.

 All kinds of fish... and squid!

Doing all kinds of things...


I loved it!


Alas, over time (and with the aid of many small picky fingers), most of that paint fell off.

We were left with crumbly bits of paint clinging to the banged up walls.  Clearly, it was time to repaint the bathroom.

So I waited five more years. 

I simply could not bring myself to do it.  I would like to say that I could not bring myself to deface my children's art, but, in truth, I simply thought it was going to be a huge job.

Well, have you ever had a job you dreaded doing, and then, when you actually did it, it wasn't that bad?

This was not like that.

I ended up soaking all the walls in wallpaper remover, scraping them with a putty knife, scrubbing them with a scrub brush, scrubbing them again with TSP, and then scrubbing them again with water to get the TSP off.

TSP (tri sodium phosphate) is an industrial detergent that is so strong that it can be used to take the gloss off of paint. My Dad, mishearing me in the throes of this project, asked, "You used TNT?"(tri nitro toluene, the stuff in dynamite). 

No. But I will definitely consider it for next time.

Now for the happy ending:

After all the prep work, patching, sanding, and repainting  was easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I even decided to paint the cabinets white and spring for new bath mats.  It looks great!!!

And this time I got wall sticker fish that are easily removable!!

Purple Boys

By Friday night, Mxyl and Zorg had made their beds.

We had gotten these cool duvet covers on clearance at Ikea. In the picture they look like dots, but a little closer, all the dots are connected and they look like molecules. I got two extras ($8 each, not a hard call) and used one to make the window curtains and one to make a curtain for use as a closet door.


And the older boys were DONE! They slept in their new room last night!

This was the silver room that had caused Choclo such angst. I wasn't that excited to paint over it since it was only last March that I painted it and it had taken 5 or 6 coats. I should have used a gray base coat to cover the blue and green stripes and then done one coat of silver, but, live and learn.

And here is the NEW younger boys' room!

The Emperor gave me a big boost on this one. I swept the huge mass of detritus out the door into a big pile in the library and he sorted it all out while I painted.

I'm not sure it shows, but I used a bit of texture on the roller, so it's not a straight single color of purple. But it is PURPLE!


We set Oob up with a cozy little nest in the bottom bunk, and this will be his first night bunking with Choclo (prayers appreciated!).

My favorite part of this project was stocking the book shelf with all our favorites for this age: Corduroy, Babar, Sendack, Baese, Mouse Paint, Suess, Goodnight Moon, Monster Machines, and so many others.

Now about that library...

Paint

Mxyl and Zorg picked out paint and painted their new room! It's actually 4 colors of purple.

Naturally, the girls wanted new paint, too. They were willing to do the work and pay for the paint, so that was an easy yes.

Then I felt the younger boys might want a color of their choice in their room since the older boys had pretty much picked out the silver spaceship theme that was there now. I asked and they (both!) said, "Purple!"

Just to be sure, I asked again,"Right now, your room is silver. Do you want it to be silver, or purple?"

"Purple!"

Fine. I bought the purple paint for them, went home and got the older boys started on their room. I went off and made dinner.

Around dinner time, Choclo came downstairs with a face of utter woe: "You painted it silver! I wanted purple!"

Somehow he hadn't really noticed that he had been living in a silver room for the last year? It took an amazing amount of time to convince him that I had not, in actual fact, popped up to his room and painted the whole thing silver while making dinner. Sigh.

Eventually, it was OK, But the emperor told me later that night that Choclo's "not-so-happy thing" that day was that Mommy had painted his room silver!