Rooms for Two

So, when we moved in, we loved how almost all of our house was painted with the exception of the overly wine-themed but tolerable kitchen, and the *gasp* wallpaper in Lily's room. Ella's room is painted with these really cools stripes in bright, fun colors. Lily's room was khaki wallpaper. Now, I'm an only child so I can only speculate, but I believe at some point Lily might complain if her room was left so dull compared to Ella's. I've also heard from various people with siblings that we might want to spruce up Lily's room at some point because Ella's room was so cool. SO, I have been wanting to remove the wallpaper and paint in there for pretty much a year now. Well the opportunity came on the 26th.


A before shot of the wallpaper

I half-joking said to Andrew now might be a good time to do it because we had my mom and Dave to watch the kids while we worked. Well, he thought about it and actually said he thought it was a good idea. I was kind of surprised but we jumped right in. We visited Home Depot, bought a chair rail, paint and other supplies. And rented a wallpaper steamer. As with all these types of projects, things take longer than expected or end up being harder than first thought. So what Andrew estimated being a three day project has turned into a 5 or 6 day project. But that's still a pretty quick turn around.


Patched and Primed, ready to go!

In the meantime, Ella has requested on multiple occasions that we turn her room into a Tinkerbell room. At first I ignored this because she's only had her fish-themed room a year. But then again, I chose that for her. And since again, I'm new to the sibiling thing, we decided to just spruce her room up a bit, since Lily was getting a new room. So we got Tinkerbell bedding (a great deal on a bed-in-a-bag from Costco), some decals for the walls, and we're going to put up crown molding painted in a Tinkerbell purple. We also bought her a new bed, trundle and nightstand yesterday and rearranged her room. Lily will be getting Ella's old bed (or I should say MY old bed--from about eighth grade!) as we retire the crib to the basement. So really in the course of 6 days, we have redone 2 rooms. Although, the crown molding in Ella's room will probably wait until next weekend when Bubba and Grand Pat come for a visit. :-)


Starting to paint and finishing up the difficult chair rail

Lily's room turned out fantastic with a lavendar on the top of the walls and a bright dark pink (called Strawberry Freeze) on the bottom of the walls with a white chair rail in-between. It will sort of be a Disney Princess room, but not overkill on the Princesses. So hopefully she'll think its as cool as Ella's room. Oh, and as my young cousin (a fifth grader) informed his grandfather at Christmas, "We don't say cool anymore, we say sweet now." Sorry to inform young Mike, but that is not a new phrase. As I recall in my old age, I said that as a kid in middle school. What goes around, comes around I guess. I digress...anyway, hopefully both Ella and Lily will think their rooms are "sweet" and it will last them for awhile. :-)

And a HUGE thank you to my mom and Dave for all their work watching the kids and making meals for us the last few days. Especially when they didn't really sign up for all that when they decided to spend the holidays with us. :-)

And Happy New Year's to everyone!
(Photos coming very soon, I promise!)