Flip This Guestroom

So the BIG THING on my BIG LIST OF THINGS TO DO before a new human lives at our house is flipping the guestroom into a baby room. The walls are already blue, so that saved us some painting, right? Well...I got it into my head that I wanted a blue ceiling with fluffy clouds.

I spent hours looking a paint chips trying to find the perfect light blue that would not clash with the wall color, not make the room feel like a cave, and still be blue enough to contrast with white clouds. In fact, I bought one blue, didn't like it, and went back to buy another blue. (And white, and a sea sponge for cloud-making, and plastic dropcloths for the floor, and new paint rollers and tape and a brush and three big pieces of plywood for cloud-making practice.) I thought of listing the prices of everything here for my readers, but that's too painful.

Instead, just picture me yesterday...after perfecting my cloud-making technique on my plywood planks in the garage...seven months pregnant standing on top of a bed covered in plastic, wearing a painter's mask to protect the unborn, staring up at a 3 foot by 3 foot patch of blue that is suddenly NOT the correct shade (even though it looked great on my plywood panel). I looked around at the vast amount of white ceiling remaining. I thought about everything that had to be taped and the plastic that had to be moved around to different parts of the room. I painted a sample cloud that did NOT look fluffy or cute because of the dang "popcorn" stuff on our ceiling and asked Frank what he thought about it. "I think it's okay." Every wife knows that those words actually mean "I hate it." I was irritated and already tired and had flecks of white AND blue ceiling popcorn in my hair. Frank offered to help me paint the entire ceiling just to see what we it would look like, and then we could paint it white again. But I knew from my little 3x3 patch just how hard it is to get good coverage on popcorn ceilings. It would be a HUGE pain to repaint if we didn't like it.

I thought about all the other stuff that needs to happen in that room (repainting a dresser, rebuilding the crib, putting together a daybed...), and I thought about all the other things on my list (closet and pantry organization projects, landscaping work, finishing Sophie's baby book, making some casseroles to freeze). And then I thought about a nine-year-old boy, telling me that fluffy clouds on the ceiling are for babies and begging, can we puhleeeeeease paint the ceiling black?!?

So I painted over my clouds in not-quite-right white. Sigh.