Isla's Room: Part 1--the paint

I knew before I even got pregnant that I wanted to decorate our next baby's room with an owl theme, regardless of whether it would be a boy or girl.  One day a couple weeks before I found out I was pregnant I found this big black wooden owl at goodwill and bought him immediately.  I wonder if this was God's way of telling me I was prego?  

Well fast forward a few months to when we found out Isla was a girl.  I already had the owl idea but now I could hone in on colors and what types of owls I wanted.  I fell in love with the Brooke bedding from Pottery Barn.  It has a ton of colors and textures that I loved and I really really wanted it.  The only problem, it was waaaay more than I wanted to spend. Well, it turns out I have amazing family and friends who chipped in an bought it for us at one of my showers!

Somewhere along the way I decided that I wanted to do stripes in Isla's room.  We had done a few horizontal stripes in Cian's room and decided on vertical stripes in our baby girl's room.  I wanted to do the same color but make the stripes in different finishes.  Seems easy enough, right?

 We stared with painting the walls with a flat coat of yellow.  The yellow turned out to be B-right!  Cian liked helping daddy paint this part.

After the flat coat Steve taped off the first wall and started testing the stripes.  Because of my lack of willingness to spend a lot of money on tools we bought a cheap laser level.  Mistake number 1.  Steve attempted to use the level but it was in fact so cheap that it wouldn't work unless you were holding it.  Turns out it is difficult to do a straight line and tape while holding a level.  He used a pen to mark some of the lines and then this thing that make a straight chalk mark on the wall for some of the others. Mistake number 2.  We took our eggshell paint and started on our test wall.  Mistake number 3.  We did about five stripes and then took the paint off to test.  Well, yellow is a light color and much to our dismay does not cover pen or chalk.  At all.  We also noticed that you could only tell the difference in the flat paint and the eggshell if the light was on it.  Bummer.  Steve was less than thrilled.  He had to get primer and prime over the pen and chalk and I had to get a can of semi-gloss so the stripes would stand out more.  So far paint=3, George's=0.

After this trial and error and two weeks worth of making mistakes we had it figured out and taped off the rest of the room then finished the paint.  If you ask Steve whether or not it was worth it, he will undoubtedly say no.  I think it is cute though and I am happy with the paint!

Ok, this is sneak peak and tomorrow's full post on her room and at Tuesday's Tummy Tuesday

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