As with most of the rest of the country, Jennifer and I had a three day weekend. During the week leading up to it, Jennifer was wanting to know what we should do to occupy our time. We couldn’t do a road trip, because we’ve been saving up for another vacation coming up in June. While the comic convention Comicpalooza was going on at the George R. Brown convention center, I didn’t feel much like going, and I knew Jennifer wouldn’t want to go. In the end, Jennifer decided she was going to do something she had been wanting to do for years, and that was repaint the guest bedroom.
The guest bedroom (before repainting)Jennifer has never liked the paint color of the guest bedroom. She had originally planned for it to be the “red room”, as each room in the house is painted a different color. The red color she had picked was supposed to be a rust red color, but it wasn’t until she had the walls painted that it turned out to be an ugly reddish-brown color. Since then, the room has been referred to as the “brown room”. The brown room over the years became a sort of catch-all dumping ground room, with one of the cats’ litter boxes in the back corner, Jennifer’s old school desk filled with books from our childhoods against one wall, and a corner filled with boxes of wrapping paper and the kitty carriers. About the only times the room was used as anything but a dumping ground was when the cats used the litter box, or when my friend George would stay the night during one of our game nights. (The litter box would then go into my office for the duration of his stay.)
In mid-paint…We decided early on that the two main tasks of our work on the guest bedroom were to paint the walls and get rid of much of the clutter. To that end, we spent most of Friday evening moving all of the furniture out except for the bed and the dresser; those two items were going to stay anyway and would have been too awkward to move, so we covered them with massive drop cloths. We didn’t find a paint color we liked until we went to Lowe’s Saturday morning. The paint color we ended up getting was a much lighter shade of brown that ended up looking a lot nicer on the wall. We spent most of Saturday afternoon painting the bedroom with the first coat, and let it dry overnight. Sunday morning, we got up bright and early to apply the second coat of paint (plus touch up the areas we missed with the first coat). It went pretty well, other than the fact that we ran out of paint before hitting the last wall. We had to go out that afternoon anyway (we had tickets to the Alley Theatre production of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club), so while we were out we picked up another gallon of paint, and finished the room that night.
The guest bedroom (after repainting)This morning, we finally got around to taking all of the drop cloths off and rearranging the room. The desk was not put back into place; we decided to move that to the library, which will replace the white couch we have in there now. The couch itself is going to Purple Heart, as we never use it and it’s only used by the cats. Thus, whenever someone sits on it, they’re covered in cat fur. The kitty carriers went into our main closet, while the wrapping paper went into Jennifer’s office for the time being. The bedside table went into our bedroom while a smaller one took its place in the brown room. We also rearranged the room, and the new arrangement gives an illusion of a lot more space than was originally present. The litter box went back in, of course; it’ll be moved back into my office whenever we have company staying the night.
All in all, we can say we’ve had a very productive weekend. We are very happy with how the room turned out, and Jennifer has said repeatedly that the color of the walls is so much better than what they originally were. While we don’t intend for the room to become a dumping ground again, we can’t guarantee it won’t. As it stands, this has been the beginning of several changes in the house. The library is already being redone, as is the front part of the living room. Of course, we can’t finish the library until we get the appropriate furniture donated. Still, we’re happier with how the house looks now, and can’t wait to finish implementing all of the changes we’re working on.
