Check, check, check!

Holy moly, what a productive weekend we had. My unexpected Friday off was spent playing Draw Something in the morning, then having lunch with TJ and Penny (who pinches now, people. PINches.), then helping our roommate get his stuff out and reclaiming this:


Our spare bedroom! This was prior to vacuuming, so sorry for the mess. After I took this and sent it to Dan with a message that read, "it's just you and me again, Buddy!" I got to work cleaning. We were waiting on the move-out to clean our carpets again, so first I had to vacuum the whole house. Dan shampooed the carpets when he got home, and then we set up our old bed in the new guest room - we have an actual GUEST room, OMG.

Then, on Saturday, I went yard sale-ing. We have an extra TV that Dan thought would be nice for our guests in our guest room, but we needed something to put it on. So I was in search of a small dresser that we could also use for storage. And on the last street I hit before giving up and going home, I found something! And it was only $15. But it was ugly. Not a problem for me, though. I know how to solve ugly dresser problems. And so I present to you, the little brother of the Most Awesome Dresser in the Universe, Fabulous Little Blue Dresser:


Gorgeous, huh? I primed and spray painted it with Valspar Indigo Cloth, and I love it. It's still sitting there curing in the sun, but it came with nice gold and cream hardware that is literally going to POP against that blue. I can't wait to put it in the room. I might have a dresser painting problem. I hope I don't end up on Intervention with a room full of people who love me like crazy and want me back.

Aaaaanyway, I also grew stuff. See?


Dan says it could be a weed or something left over from the reused soil (he got it from his parents' yard), but I don't care. I put seeds all over that planter and I watered it, and there was nothing there before and there is now, so I grew it. I win at growing things.

And finally, the biggest most exciting thing of my weekend, my stripes are DONE!! That's right, I finally finished pretty much the biggest project I've ever done. It was exhausting and my body hurts from crouching and reaching and rolling and brushing, but it's done and so very worth it.

So, start to finish. First, we painted all four walls Valspar Frosted Lilac (4 weeks ago, but whatever). Then, Dan used a level to pencil on lines for me to follow with tape all around the room. To make it so we wouldn't have to go near the pesky baseboards again with a second color and risk drippage, the bottom and top 4" of the wall stayed Frosted Lilac, and we divided up the rest of the wall into roughly 12" stripes. It took me a good 2 hours to lay the tape down.


Then, you have to seal that tape with paint, so I had to use the Frosted Lilac again and paint onto the tape from the wall to make sure I'd have sharp lines and no seepage from the darker paint when I went over it. This is the part that had me questioning my sanity for wanting striped walls. It was meticulous and not in a fun way at all. Not to mention, it was my first time being on the ladder (Dan did the Frosted Lilac weeks ago, including the cutting in near the ceiling), and that just makes me about 6 kinds of anxious (hello, I'm Brooke, and I'm a wuss).

Finally, that was done and I could paint on the Valspar Silverberry on every other stripe. I was so incredibly paranoid about painting the wrong stripe, I wrote "D" for dark at every corner to make sure I didn't screw it up. But it looked really cool when it was done, even with the tape still down.


At this point, it was like 8:30 Saturday night and I'd been couped up in the room for what felt like days and wanted to be done, but you have to pull the tape off while the paint is still wet, so I grabbed a glass of wine, took a deep breath and started pulling. And I discovered that I'd done a really decent job taping and sealing and it had actually worked!


It looked awesome, aside from one little issue. When Dan penciled on my lines and I went over them with tape, I wasn't very smart or thoughtful about the fact that if I covered the pencil, it wouldn't get painted. So I had very minimal seepage under the tape, but I had a lot of pencil line left exposed. Kind of a bummer, but yesterday morning while Dan went dirtbike riding, I whipped out a small brush, put on some tunes and slowly worked my way around the room painting over the pencil and evening out the lines by also covering seepage and hitting the areas that needed to be otherwise touched up.


I love love love how it came out. I love how bold and fun it looks. I love how the colors change with the light - sometimes it looks very obviously purple, and in other light it looks very grey. I couldn't be happier with it.

We spent the rest of the day yesterday having lunch, hanging out with my in-law's dog (they're out of town), and doing some more cleaning and reorganizing. It was a perfectly productive weekend, and I feel like I got so much accomplished. This weekend, my parents and sister and brother-in-law are coming to visit and I'm very excited! I can't wait to see them all and show them our projects :)