Project Post: Striped Bathroom Walls

As I have mentioned before, I am going through a weird "nesting" phase where I am refinishing furniture and wanting to decorate and do projects around the house like a crazy woman.  Maybe I feel like I will never have this sort of time again with two kids? I dunno.

So here's another one of my crazy woman projects....This was probably the craziest.  I have seen lots of people painting stripes on their walls and I thought, I could do that.  I have also heard it is pretty easy too and it seemed easy reading the tutorials.  I pretty much knew from when we moved in about a year ago that I wanted to do that in our half bath and have just been putting it off.  Well one night I couldn't sleep.  My mind kept racing and got fixated on this painting stripes idea.  I realized I had the paint- I would use my oops paint I used on my end table from this post here!  Then I thought about how I would go about doing this project.  I thought about that for a while until I realized it was WAY too late and I needed sleep so I had to try to turn my brain off.

The next morning first thing I said to Carson was, "I'm going to paint stripes in our half bath.  I'm just going to do it."  In which he replied with a lot of excuses like, "Are you sure that's a good idea?"  and "We have so many other things we should be doing."  I told him, I don't care what excuses you come up with and you don't even need to help.  I'm doing this.  So I got right to work that evening.

BIG MISTAKE!!  I will publicly tell you, Carson was right! Husbands do sometimes know what's best ;)  Now I in no way am some sort of professional and frankly I had never painted before so I really didn't know entirely what I was doing haha.  But the first night, was horrible!  NOTHING was going right, including the fact that I ran out of paint! grrr.  I started when James went to bed (about 8:30pm) and was up until midnight so I could get to a good stopping point to go to bed.  It was a rough 3 and a half hours!  I just kept thinking What am I doing?  Why do I do this to myself?  Why am I going nuts and doing all these projects when I'm almost 7 months pregnant and tired?  After I was finished for the evening and cleaning up, I let the best of my emotions get me and just cried.  Carson is so good to me and just hugged me and told me it's going to look great.  Even though in his mind I'm sure he was saying, I told you so.

So here is how I tackled this project.  I found there are two ways to do this, you could tape off your segments and then paint or do your whole wall the lighter color first, let it dry and then tape off and apply the second color where designated.  I chose to do the latter.  Not sure which is better or easier if there is one but I personally felt that having half of it done before I taped was appealing.  Plus if you did it the other way, you'd maybe have to tape in two stages because the tape covers part of where you need to paint anyway.

Here's the run down on how I did it (if you dare to tackle it):

• Removed any decoration on walls and spackled in the holes and let dry
• Cleaned walls with warm, soapy water and let dry
• removed hardware including toilet paper holder, towel rack, and outlet/light switch covers
• Take tank off toilet (if doing this in a bathroom) I did not realize this until I got there and thought I don't know how to take a toilet apart without water spurting all over!  So I You Tubed it and it's actually quite easy.
• Taped off with Scotch Blue Tape anywhere like around cabinets etc where you don't want to paint
• Now you're ready to paint!  I chose to do white and gray stripes so I painted all of my walls white.  I used Glidden High Endurance Plus 2 in 1 paint + primer in semi gloss white GALLON size.  I used a large roller and then used a good angled paint brush around cabinets, ceilings etc.  I had to do two coats because my walls were a cream color (I didn't realize how dark they were and didn't take into account I'd have to do two coats! arg- more time!)  Let dry.

• After second coat of white paint was dry, I marked where I wanted my stripes. First I decided about how many stripes I wanted (I decided 12) then measured the height of the wall (91") so I took 91 and divided it by 12 to get roughly how wide each stripe would be so 7.5" and then marked every 7.5" on one wall.   Now I don't have a fancy laser level or anything so I used a good ol' yard stick and hand held level from my tool kit and just drew straight lines on my marks and matched them up around each wall.  I was very meticulous with this.  I was so afraid I would come out with uneven lines!  
• After measuring and marking, it was time to tape.  (I actually marked and taped at the same time as I went). Make sure you tape off in the "white" areas because those are already done and don't need to be painted.   I also made sure the tape rested just above or below (depending on  the pencil line so that I'd be painting over and covering up my pencil marks with gray.  So you see here, the "thinner" stripes are going to be my white stripes and the "thicker" stripes will be painted gray but they will all come out to be the same size.  Sort of trippy....I kept having to second guess myself and check.

• Then I painted my gray stripes with a small roller.  As I mentioned, I used my oops paint from another project.  Since it is an oops paint, it didn't have a color name.  I just know it was America's Finest line from Glidden.  It was a flat finish so I was a little worried about how it would look with the white semi-gloss but I really like how it turned out.  Again, I made sure to tape off and use a good angled brush to get up around the ceiling, mirror, baseboards and cabinets.   Update:  Flat finish paints do not clean well and easily leave fingerprints, dirt, marks etc.  I knew this going into my project but decided since I already had the paint I would see how it turned out.  The walls still look pretty good now about 8 months later but I do have a couple spots where my son has touched the wall with grubby fingers that I can not get off.  So in hindsight, I should have found some satin finish paint.  

And that's it!

Seems pretty easy huh? Oh but let me tell you IT IS NOT haha!  I easily spent like 5 hours alone on measuring and taping.  It was probably a 12-15 hour project.  I worked on it for three days every free time I had.  I'm not sure if it was just me making it harder than it is or what but it was the project from Hell! 

Let's see a before and after

and some more of the finished product from different angles

When I was done, Carson asked me, "Well, was it worth it?"  I quickly responded, "NO!" haha but I am happy with the outcome.  It is exactly what I had in mind.  I am so happy with it, just so glad it's over!  In hindsight I would've paid someone to come do it for me ;)

So I promised myself (and Carson) no more projects until well after baby is born.  I was SO sore after this and emotionally drained.  

I can't wait to decorate now!

3rd Trimester

I am currently 28 weeks pregnant which means I am officially in the 3rd trimester! Man oh man do I really only have less than 3 months left?  It is going by so quickly now and I still feel like there is so much I want to get done before he comes!

Here I am at 28 weeks

What's been going on lately as far as pregnancy goes?

It is HOT!  With James I was pregnant through the Winter which is SO much easier!  I feel like I have so many layers (and I probably do with the maternity pants etc).  August is going to be hard, just sayin.

I feel HUGE, though people tell me they can't believe how small I am, I still feel huge and I have 12 more weeks to go!  I do think I am about the size I was with James at the stage, maybe smaller.  I thought for sure with the second I'd be humungo especially because I started showing earlier.  Maybe this baby will be a little smaller (not a bad thing at all) haha.  Sleeping is hard and has been for a few weeks now.  I've had bad restless legs which makes it hard but now even just turning over is difficult and wakes me up.  I feel like a beached whale turning over...thwump!  haha

One difference from James is that I don't get the leg cramps like I did...oh those were bad, often with me waking up screaming in the middle of the night scaring Carson half to death.  This would happen a few nights a week.  This time I've only had a few nights where I've woken up with them but can quietly get them to go away.

I have been having braxton hicks contractions since about 22 or 23 weeks which I was thinking was sort of odd (not to the point I was concerned).  With James I started feeling them at about 28 weeks which I think was even early.  But it was interesting, I went for my last OB appointment at 24 weeks and he asked if I've been having any contractions.  I said, "Yes...." He asked,"Did you have them early on with your last pregnancy?"  I told him I started having them at 28 weeks.  He nodded and said, "Ok, yeah.  Generally if you feel them sooner with your first, you'll get them even earlier the second time around.  Nothing to be concerned about."  So that's good.  Though the further along I'm getting, the more uncomfortable and some-what painful they are becoming.  Gearing up for show time I guess!

I am having a couple kind of odd symptoms.  One being the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands are often itchy and really really warm.  Doctor said it's nothing to be concerned about.  Also my left foot in a certain spot in my arch has been really sore since like week 20.  So needless to say, standing or walking around for long periods of time is not ideal :)

This little one is a mover especially at night!  This better not be a sign of how he'll be outside of my tummy ;)  He is already in my ribs quite a bit.  James never hung out in my ribs, I don't even remember it really being a problem in the last few weeks of gestation.  Maybe a little, but not like this one!

I really do enjoy being pregnant even with all the symptoms and extra layers.  I mean, so far I have had two excellent pregnancies with no complications and nausea so I can not complain!

I am now starting to see the doctor every two weeks instead of monthly so it's getting close!!

We have I think narrowed down the names to two but can't decide from there.  It may come down to deciding on a name when we meet him.

We are getting ready to clear out James' old room where the crib is.  Currently we have all his toys in there so it's sort of his play room.  We bought a few scrap pieces of carpet and laid them out downstairs in our basement and that is where all the toys will go.  I wish we had a finished basement or at least the family room but we'll make do.  James likes to go downstairs and play but only with one of us so with moving his toys down there we may just be hanging out down in our unfinished basement most of the day!  We'll see how that goes.

Pictures

During our crazy week last week, we had professional pictures of the Cullimore grandkids done.  They turned out so cute!  Here's a few that James was in:

And Summer Continues...

Wow we have had a cuh-RAZY start to July.  In fact, I can't believe we're already halfway into the second week.  The beginning of July is usually pretty busy for us with the 4th of July holiday and the Cook reunion every year during this time but I absolutely love it, as tiring as it is.

Actually leading into July was crazy.  The end of June we had something going on pretty much every day.  A while back I had purchased some City Deals or what-have-you for the Children's Museum at Gateway (we've never been) and then forgot about them.  Oops.  Luckily Courtney also purchased some and informed me they expired at the end of June (it was already June when we realized this).  So we planned a little outing and invited Emily to join.  It was such a cute place!  I can't believe we had never gone before.  James absolutely loved it and it was fun seeing him "discover".

I went a little overboard when buying the coupons and bought 4 of them. So since they were going to expire that week, James and I decided to go on a little date that Wednesday and went back up to play :)

Also, end of June we went to the Riverton splash pad with a friend of mine from work and her little girl.  It was a lot of fun!

Then July hit.  Clayton and Brandi and their kids were in town for the festivities.  They live in California so it was nice to get to spend time with them.  We did stuff pretty much every day but I'll only highlight a few. July 1st I watched my sister's kids pretty much the whole day and took them with us up to the Aquarium in Sandy to meet up with the Cullimore's.  Then we went back to my sister's house to swim. We then met up with the Cullimore's at Brick Oven to celebrate Chris' birthday.

I had to work on the 3rd so James had a sleepover with all of his cousins the night of the 2nd over at baga Cullimore's house!  This was his first real sleepover and he did great! He got to play with baga and Lexy the next day while I worked. 

On the 4th we went to our neighborhood breakfast then to my parent's house to celebrate with my family.  He loved the fireworks (though some of them were loud).  He keeps asking for fireworks now :)

On the 5th we went up to SL and played at Jungle Jim's then started the Cook reunion with the traditional Oakley Rodeo.  We were so glad that Cardin could come from Missouri to spend the weekend with us!  

The 6th we continued the Cook reunion with visiting grandpa Cook's grave (I'm bummed I didn't get a pic of us by his beautiful headstone) and then we headed over to a park where we set up the giant slip n slide and ate and enjoyed everyone's company.  We were also hit with a huge rain storm that drove us into the pavilion and even flooded that!  James thoroughly enjoyed stomping in the huge puddles and getting dirty.  Such a boy :)

Carson HAD to buy James a (some-what) matching tank top.  Haha oh boy ;)

On the 7th we visited Laurie and Kelvyn's ward where Clayton blessed baby Cael.  We had a nice luncheon afterward.  I sadly didn't get a pic of Clayton and Brandi's family :(  

On the 9th we went to the zoo with all the Cullimore cousins and any adults who could.  It was HOT!  The kids loved seeing the animals though.  We got to say good-bye to Clayton and Brandi and their kids as they were to head back home the next day.  I didn't get any good pictures.  

So crazy that it's already July 10th!  We had a fun and busy two weeks.  I love spending time with the ones I love.  What great memories.

This is how a lot of our naps went

And James and I slept in till 9:45am this morning!  We are both pooped!