What a drag it is getting old

"I'm just not the same today"
I hear ev'ry muscle say
You just don't appreciate that we get tired
You're so hard to satisfy, We can't tranquilize your mind
And go runnin' for the shelter of our papa's little helper
And four gets you through the night, helps to minimize your plight

~ paraphrased from Lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards


Man, I am one hurtin' pile of bones. I think this is the first time I've ever really felt my age catching up to me. I'm all of 34 years old, but felt really creaky this weekend.

Little boy isn't as little as he used to be. It's time for a big boy bed. No problem, right? Mrs. Dave wants to change a few things in little boy's room to go from super-cute baby's room (ever notice it's only a "nursery" until the kid is actually born, then it become (Baby's name)'s room?) to super-cute little boy's room. "I don't want to do anything major, and if we can keep from painting or only paint a little, that would be best." Bear in mind that this is a only a 10'x10' room.

So, now 4 colors of paint, 2 of which have two types (flat and semi-gloss) and two coats of all but one of those colors and types, and I'm shot. In case the previous sentence doesn't make sense, here's the deal. The cumulative number of trips around the room are in parenthesis.

Prep: Super-cute babyish wallpaper border needs to be removed. Fortunately I manage to get most of the top layer off just by pulling it off (1). Then we had to use a Paper Tiger to score the remainer of the wallpaper(2). I perhaps got a little too aggressive with it. But it did the job. Then we sprayed this stuff on the paper to remove it from the wall(3). It worked pretty well. It did an excellent job on the paper that was self-glued. The part where we had to paste it ourselved (I guess they forgot the self-glue on that batch), it was a little more difficult, but it still worked. Then had to scrape off the more stubborn areas(4). After that, and realizing I pushed too hard with the paper tiger, I had to go back and put a light spackle in the claw marks(5).

Now I had to spackle other holes in the wall from various reasons like pictures, shelves, etc(6). Sand all spackling smooth, including tiger marks(7). Next, caulk spaces between the crown molding and wall/ceiling(8/9). We should have done this when we first put the molding up, but ran out of time. Lots of messy overhead work. Ok, so after all of that, the room looks just the same only without the wallpaper border.

The PAINt:
Paint 1 - White Ceiling paint, two coats of edging the perimeter, two coats on the rest of the ceiling, lots of looking up and reaching overhead.(10,11,12,13)

Paint 2 - Yellow Semi-gloss for crown molding - mercifully, since the molding was yellow before, it only needed one coat. Again, lots of overhead reaching and looking. (14)

Paint 3 - Yellow flat - This goes around the top half (or so, maybe a little more) of the walls up to the crown molding. Most of which is at eye level or higher. Edging two coats, painting two coats (15,16,17,18)

Paint 4 - Green flat - at least it was supposed to be. We didn't double check and actually got green semi-gloss, right now we're thinking we can live with it rather than repaint it. We'll see. Two coats. - This is just a 10" or so stripe around the whole room. Probably the easiest to do, as the stripe is just about waist high. (19,20)

Paint 5 - Blue Flat. - This goes around the whole room from the green stripe down to the baseboards. Two coats. - It's a nice blue that is somewhere between navy and royal blue, not too dark, not too pastel. Edging two coats, painting two coats (21,22,23,24)

Paint 6 - Blue semi-gloss - For the baseboards, door frame, one side of the door and the closet doors. This was probably the killer of all of them. Doing the baseboards takes forever for such a small area. Right now, we only have one coat of that done and it absolutely needs another. It's just sitting indian-style and crouching down to paint the baseboard really takes a toll on your back. I got about halfway around the room before I had to stand up and man, that was painful! (25, 26-to come soon!)

But let us not forget the other trips around the room: For masking tape! Since we had so many colors, we had to be careful not to get them all over each other. So, we had to tape off first for the yellow(26), all the way around the room. Next was for blue(27), then the ceiling (to paint the molding)(28). After we get all that painted and tape pulled down, we had to put up the tape to contain the green stripe, so two times around for that(29,30)! Then we went around to touch up the green stripe(31,32 - once for yellow, once for blue). Masking tape can allow a little bleed through the edges, so we had to clean up some of the more glaring splotches. Of course, as I was going through it, I goofed and made it worse in a couple of spots than it was originally. Luckily nothing I can't fix by touching up with green.

I should note that Mrs. Dave edged the flat yellow once, did the first coat of green, did half of the caulking of the molding and touched up the yellow/green border. But most importantly, she painted the closet doors and the room door while I painted in the room itself.

So, after all is said and done, we went around that room about 35 times! I'll post some pictures when the room is done and we have all the furniture in. Right now, little boy's changing table is taking up a lot of space in our bedroom at the foot of our bed, as is the rocking chair his play kitchen. He's been sleeping in the guest bedroom the past two nights. But for all of our efforts, it has been worthwhile. We really like how it looks so far. It was just a lot of work for something that looks so 'simple'. But with all those trips around the room, looking/reaching up, crouching down, rolling the paint on, taping, untaping, running up and downstairs to get stuff, whew! it was a lot of exhausiting work!

Last night and the night before, it has never felt so good to get in bed. They were just days that every muscle hurt and let me know about it...loudly. Who would have thought painting would be such good exercise? And don't get me started on the shelves I still have to put together...

I need a nap...

Dave