Thursday, July 28, 2011

Redecorating

This is probably the longest-lasting redecorating project in the entire history of redecorating, but it's FINALLY done! Well, an inch from done.

See, Kevin painted the girls' bedroom back in 2003, when Nora was one. The walls were periwinkle and the ceiling was a pale, buttery yellow. It was perfect. Keyword "was". After eight years of abuse from two lovely but energetic little girls and their friends, the walls were in desperate need of some TLC. And I made the fatal mistake of asking Nora and Dana what color they would like their room painted.

Nora could only live with a turquoise bedroom.

Dana couldn't bear the thought of anything other than purple.

After much negotiation, I finally got them to agree to two purple walls and two turquoise walls. Which was AWESOME, until I realized that this meant their bedroom would be turquoise and purple. Turquoise AND purple.

So I went and picked up a bunch of paint chips, and after deliberating for a while, I picked up a couple of sample-sized jars of the top contenders. You know what would have been helpful here? Some "before" photos. The samples were horrid. In fact, when Dana saw the squares painted on the walls, she actually got really upset and asked again and again why I didn't ask her before painting those colors on the walls.

So then a family friend suggested that I find fabric with both purple and turquoise in it and match the paint to it, since the colors would obviously go together already. So I went to the fabric store and got fabric to sew curtains, which I did immediately. And everyone was happy with them. Except I never really got a chance to paint.

This week, the girls have been at day camp, and I decided to just go for it. And the thing is, when I asked if they still wanted purple and turquoise, Nora said she wanted green and Dana agreed. And since green is my favorite color, I wasn't about to argue.









In the end, I took some of the fabric to the paint store and found a hue that was an exact match. It was a bit bright, so the paint store man lightened it half a shade and it was perfect. Still bright, but pretty. This would all be more impressive if I would have taken photos of the walls after Kevin patched all the boo boos but before I actually painted-it looked like a war zone.

I plan to sew a little throw pillow cover for each girl using leftover curtain fabrics. My mom bought them turquoise down comforters last summer, but it's oddly too warm for them in the summer, even this far north. At any rate, while the pillows will look weird with the ballerina quilts, they will be perfect with the turquoise down. Now I just have to pick a color for our bedroom...