Painting Nudes

Or "What I did Labor Day Weekend".

So four years ago, give or take a month or two, I had this attack of whimsy and took it out on my bedroom. My sister and I had saved enough to finally buy new carpet for our bedrooms, and decided if we were going to splurge and do that, we should go ahead and paint before it was installed. That way we could be as messy as we wanna be, since the carpet was being pulled up.

So the aforementioned whimsy attack occurred, and in my defense, my sister was similarly attacked. Which resulted in painting my room a lovely lavender, with darker purple stars stenciled on the ceiling in a random pattern. Oh, sure, some of those stars found their way to the walls, too. My sister, similarly afflicted, painted her room pink, with darker pink hearts.

Yes, I know. What can I say? At the time, it seemed appropriate.

So recently we both came to our senses and realized we weren't 12 years old. The rest of our house is very tastefully painted, with hardwood flooring throughout (except the kitchen). We decided it was time to bring the bedrooms up to speed, since they can be seen from the living room.

Anyhoodle - we painted our rooms this weekend. She went with a soft, grown-up mint green to accent her burgundy carpet, and I went with this soy latte-brown, to make my blue-grey carpet blend in.

And so the painting began. Or rather, the prep work. We couldn't get an early jump on things thanks to a water main break right off our property on Wednesday evening that kinda ruined us for a few days - so Saturday we got started clearing out the rooms. We'd figured we could leave the beds in there, and paint around them - but after applying the primer and having a real hard time doing it, we decided the beds had to go. On Sunday, the beds were disassembled and removed, then plastic replaced on the floors, and painting ensued.

Let me explain, I'm a very messy painter. I'm wearing old jeans, a t-shirt I don't care about, and I already have a ginormous glob of primer on one shoulder (it just missed my face by an inch). While doing the trim work, I realized I was going to run out of paint - even though my room is 100 square feet, and I had a gallon ! I made it through, but took a look at the walls and you could see two colors there - not roller marks, but clearly the primer hadn't covered everything smoothly. We should have tinted the primer, but didn't.

My sister's room turned out great, probably the lighter color she was using, and she had some left over. So another trip to Lowe's nets me a second gallon, then we run to Olive Garden for some quick take-out . . . long story short, we got dinner for free!

I get home, we eat, and I figure I'd best get to painting. By now, I've been wearing these same paint-splattered jeans and t-shirt for two days, and I've discovered my bra has a tear at one seam (I'm pissed about that) so, since it's pretty hot in the house, and the curtains are all pulled closed, I decided to paint in my undies. If I splatter again, it'll just land on me, and if it hits my bra, I'm tossing it soon anyway. The panties - well they can always get tossed, too.

So I put down some plastic, figuring I just have to paint the walls with a roller, basically cover the majority of the area, and I'll be fine. With every expectation of being covered in paint . . . I do the entire room without spilling so much as ONE DROP on me.

Not one drop.

Thus, I've concluded the best way to paint a room and stay neat and clean doing it, is to strip naked and throw caution -- and your boobies -- to the wind.

Now, to be honest, my room color turned out a bit darker than I expected -- I've dubbed my room "The Bat Cave" since painting it, but it's really nice. It's all grown-up looking, and decorated with stuff I had previously, but in a better way now. But this color is much more conducive to displaying my collection of Japanese teapots. It's brown, but with a plum accent to it in the right light. (and there we go talking about plums again).

The only thing is, when I woke up this morning, I thought I was in someone else's room.

Guess I'm not used to this "grown up" stuff yet.