oil-based paint...

makes my throat hurt more.

on the upside, critters room is getting mighty close to being done. just need a 2nd coat on whites/blackboard/silver trim, sand the floors, and it will be ready for furniture. the bed arrived today. im so excited. he still doesnt realise its going to be HIS room. cutie pie.


he fell asleep tonight curled up on a chair. while the tv was on. rather loudly. he sleeps through ANYTHING

:P

why does the paint have to take 24hours to dry? huh? not fair.

*sulk*

what a lovely day

my husband ahs been offerend a job. they are enthusiastic about him, he thinks the job will be good. its less money than we would really like, and things will be tight, but they want him in a higher position, he just has to prove he's capable, and he will be fast tracked. he starts next week.

the lord provides.



also we bought all the paint and whatnot for my kids room. and we've bought a bed for him. so he will finally be in a real bed instead of a cot with the sliding rail broken off. still not sure how he manage to break that. anyway, theres only a little bit of well left to scrub with bleacj to kill all the mildew, half the cracks are filled, and hopefully it will be finished by the weekend. then we just need to pull up the carpet. it would be lovely to have it finished by his birtdhay, and with hubby's new job (again, thankyou lord) there wont be much time left for painting after this week.

hmmmm

i think weve finally picked out the colours. now the walls are being scrubbed down with bleach. FUN. smells just FANTASTIC. all the wallpaper is off, the mildew is being bleached away, all thats left now is to fill in the cracks, sand everything down a bit, and PAINT!! WOOHOO!!!!! oilbased undercoat to help keep the waterdamage from seeping through, and a mould resistant topcoat. wont THAT be fun. not to mention trying to seal up the open fireplace.

truly, this room is much more difficult than ours was. if it werent for the expense, id try and convince hubby to get a builder in to make sure its all good. as it is we have to wait till mum is out and were renting it from her, cause then all repairs are tax deductible.

ugh. grargh.

more colours

sooooooooooooo despite our absolute LOVE of that blue, once we saw it in the light of.. well.. night actually, it looks a bit purple. had another look this morning, and it definitely looks fantastic during the day, but purplish at night. so... weve given up on it.


theres a couple OTHER blues we now like, but its all getting a little exasperating, finding colours that not only look good, they look good TOGETHER. hubby's been talking about picking something other than blue for the trim, but honestly i think brown would be a bit too grown up for a little boys room, and thats the way hubby's leaning. who knows, it may look fantastic though. i never would have picked brown for our room, but it looks great. im almost thinking yellow might be nice, but im not sure how to fit it in.


its all making my brain hurt. :(

colours for critters

what do you think? our original plan was the big patch on the left. you cant really see in the picture, but there ARE 2 shades of 'white' there... one we already had for our room, and one we bought to go with the blue. it looked PERFECT in the store, but now its on the wall it is FAR TOO PINK. so were going to go with our white, i think. and white ceilings, obviously.

anyway.... so we were thinking that, then hubby mentioned that even though that had been his idea to begin with, now hes thinking maybe he'd prefer to have a unifying theme throughout the house of having every room have the same white for the ceiling, and the walls above the picture rail. (this was what i originally wanted anyway, when we started thinking about painting the house, and kinda what we were thinking when we went to get paint - light walls, dark trim, white(ish) ceiling - but he saw the light/white/dark in a book next to the paints, and it really does look good.)

but we're undecided as to whether we like light walls with darker trim, or dark walls with lighter trim.

we both really like the darker blue, and whatever we choose, we want that blue. we will find other colours that go with THAT BLUE. but the lighter one... is a bit dark. in my opinion. hubby thinks its too light for some looks, too dark for others. if we go with option one, light blue/white/dark blue, it definitely needs to be lighter. for option 2, white/dark/light, hubby thinks it should be darker, i think it should be lighter. for option 3, white/light/dark, we both think it should be lighter.

regardless of our current opinions, i think we should buy sample pots of both a lighter AND a darker shade, and try them BOTH out for both options. when we were doing our room, our initial choice was not quite right, it looked a bit too blue for the room, and we decided maybe we should have a yellower shade of green. hubby went to get a sample, and while he was there he bought a completely different darker green as well, just to see how it would look. when we started painting, the yellower shade looked hideous, and the darker one he picked on a random whim was PERFECT. and full room size, it still looks gorgeous. i love it. but it just goes to show, what you logically think should work, isnt always right.

sad renovations

we've practically finished our room, just need to finish painting the door and window, and any little patches we find didnt get a second coat.

so now we're starting on the critters room. well.. soon-to-be-the-critter's-room. we've torn off as much wallpaper as we can without stripper, all my sister's stuff is out, its now just furniture, a few paper scraps, and his clothes.

a couple of the paintbrushes didnt like the paint, so we went to bunnings today to get new ones, and while we were there, we had a look at paint colours, trying to decide what we like, and what we want to do with his room. if he was older i'd let him help with the decision, but as it is, he just says 'YES!' to everything we ask him, so he's not much use. we picked out some colours, bought some little sample pots, and when critter and i have finished lunch, i'm going to go scrub some patches of the wall and paint them with the sample, make sure we actually like it.

its definitely important to do this - with our room we decided we didnt like one of the colours we had picked out, and got a different one that was just SO much better. colours look different in large patches on the wall than they do in a little square of paper, and the light in your house will almost certainly be different to the light in the paint shop, and it can make SUCH a huge different to the colours.


anyway... doing our room was fun. i am SO happy. it looks great, it looks new, we have new furniture, and its now OUR room. doing my son's room is going to be difficult.

in april i lost a baby. i wasnt even certain i was pregnant until i lost it, and because of that, i have no 'proof' that i was. i never had a chance to take a pregnancy test, and i never saw a doctor about it. but i was anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks late (my cycles are all kinds of crazy), and i NEVER have food related nausea, sore breasts and an increased need to use the loo.. except when i was pregnant. so no matter what anyone says about not being able to be sure there was a baby, i sure do KNOW there was a baby thankyou very much.

and now there isnt. and its making it hard to do my son's room. i cant help thinking that i should be doing this room for another baby, as well as my critter. that we should be at the point where we're getting new baby furniture (we had second hand stuff and its falling apart now), telling our son about the new baby, that we're fixing up this room so he and the baby have a nice place to sleep.... but i cant do that.

i can just be slightly comforted by the fact that my baby is in SUCH a better place now, and doesnt have to worry about renovations.

but i still wish i was doing this for my dear one as well.

cutie pie

on thursday we painted the walls. green. guess who wanted to help? he got the smallest paintbrush we could find, so not too much paint got wasted. and we had to show him where to paint, over and over again. and again.

and again.

daddy had to paint over it, to make sure it was all smoothed out and no white patches showing through, but he had fun, and he enjoyed helping. now if only i could figure out how to get paint out of that shirt...



please excuse the me in the background. i normally try to avoid having my picture taken, but i was focused on keeping him from painting himself, and didnt notice hubby.

the past few days.....

have been very stressful, but very very satisfying.

since hubby isnt working, he's been doing a lot of stuff on the room, and ive been helping him (mostly by keeping the critter out of harms way the past couple days.)

the paint came up well, the colours were all good, but we decided the green should be a little less blue, and hubby went back to bunnings and got a different colour, which is just perfect.

so on saturday we went to the paint store, and we got our paints, and some gap filler and crack filler, a small roller, and a scraper to get rid of the wallpaper that mum and i couldnt reach 7 years ago because the wardrobe was too heavy to move.

so, two coats of each colour, flat ceiling, gloss trimmings, low sheen wall, and the window will have white inside because that much brown would be overpowering.

the gaps between the floorboards and the walls have been filled in, the cracks down the walls are done, the curtain rail thing is down. the blinds need to be taken down before the window gets painted, and will probably need to be replaced, since they are a good 20 years old, and rather gross now. the window has a crack in it, and damp gets in when it rains, making the blind all mouldy. so the window really needs fixing too.

washing down the walls with sugar soap made my shoulder ache, but hubby was nice enough to voltaren it for me, after a massage. isnt he sweet?

yesterday there was a blackout. so we went down the shops to try and find a laundry hamper. we found a nice one in target. $160. NO THANKYOU.

we found a SET in kmart, 2 hampers, 5 small baskets, wicker, lined. $80. well. its still too expensive, but there wasnt anything anywhere else, so we got it. get to the checkout, its $55, and theres a discount, so its only $35. so we now have a hamper for us, one for the kid, and some random baskets.

so today we went back to bunnings again, to get sealer and more drop sheets, and got some kids acrylic paint at the same time, and while daddy sanded the walls, kidlet and i painted a couple of the boxes for aunty's residence re-heating (housewarming) present, and i'm making new linings as well.

the room is completely covered in plastic, so the furniture left in there doesnt get covered in dust when hubby sanded, and wont get dripped on when we paint.

EDIT: and apparently hubby has painted most of the ceiling part. YAY!!!!!!!!!! walls are sealed, top part is done, that just leaves walls and trim! wooooooooooo!!!

more house things!!

and now we have SHEETS!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOO!!!

500thread count pure cotton sheet set - flat sheet, fitted sheet, 2 pillow cases
mattress protector
4 pillow protectors
new child sized pillow for the critter, cause his was horribly horribly disgusting

less than 200$. i love the sales at spotlight.

we could have got the 1000thread count pure cotton sheet set... but it cost 300$. yes, you read that right. wonderfully soft though.


we also decided on some paint colours.... my room started getting painted in 2000. its about 2/3 done.. i think... and we dont like the colour. so... NEW PAINT!!! picked out colours we think we like, bought little sample pots to make sure it looks ok once its in the room, and if it does, we'll be going back and getting more, probably on the weekend.

and it will finally feel like home.


you have no idea how content i feel right now, despite all the blargh going on.