Adventures in Nursery Painting!

Here's the conversation Joel and I had Friday about our plans for Saturday: 

Me: Let's get the nursery painted and done this weekend. What do you think?

Joel: Yeah, that sounds good. Let's wake up early Saturday and we can go to Lowes and get the paint stuff, then go get Daisy hay, then we can come home and I'll do some yard work while you run errands and when you get back, you can help me figure out what to paint first and I'll ask Eric to help me paint the room when we are done taping. (Yes, I realize that was a long run-on sentence he had. I just wanted it to be authentic) 

Me: Ok, sounds good. 

Joel: I'm excited!! 

SATURDAY ROLLS ALONG

Joel: C'mon wake up we are already behind schedule! 

Me: Grumble Grumble GRRRRRR ARGH

So off we go around 9:30am to my preferential home do-it-yourself store (cause c'mon, Home Depot is for contractors and dudes. Lowes is set up for us women! All nice and decorated and much less orange inside...)

 

Now this is where I focused my efforts when I was looking for our paint choices. I had already pre-picked out the colors for the nursery and with Joel's help, we had narrowed it down to the two we chose. Which you will see what we chose below!  

Why did I choose Valspar? No idea. No specific reasoning other than I was drawn to those colors and ultimately when we narrowed our choices down, they both happened to be Valspar Signature paints. 

So the paint lady (whose job actually seems kind of cool and maybe in another life would be kind of fun to work in the paint section of Lowes ) asks us what kind of finish do we want. Do we want Matte? Satin? Semi-Gloss? Gloss? 

Me (to Paint Lady): This is for a nursery. What do you think is best ? 
PL: Oh you are gonna want Semi-Gloss or Gloss. It's easier to wipe down and clean. 
Joel: Done, semi gloss it is.

So Paint Lady begins to mix up the colors of paint that we had given to her (after we had a lengthy discussion about prices.) Let me sum up for you the discussion. Given the paint we chose, a gallon was $29.99. We chose our main color and went with a gallon of that and then our accent color we chose a quart which was $15.99. There were only two options. Quart or Gallon. A shitload or juuuuust enough. Those are your options.

Back to Paint Lady, while she is mixing up the color for us, Joel and I wander the paint section looking at other things we are going to need to paint. Drop cloth, painting tape, paint brush set, etc. My husband has to analyze everything though so we go back and forth discussing the pros and cons of each thing. Which kind of sounds like this: 

Joel: Why is there a difference between this brush set and this other one? They are the exact same and same price. They have the same amount of brushes and everything

Me: This says that this is microfiber and the other one isn't.

Joel: So? I don't get it.

Me: I don't know! I'm not Paint Lady..I don't know jack about this stuff! **PUSHES CART AWAY**

Joel: mumble mumble mumble I don't get it, this is stupid. Same price, different set? Blah blah blah

He did get me to smile with this photo though...although when the camera wouldn't focus fast enough he was like HURRY HURRY I LOOK LIKE A DORK. 

Yes, yes you do. But you are MY dork.

 

So here is what we went with size-wise. Big gallon of Valspar Paint + Primer Ultra (whatever the hell that means) and a quart of the Valspar Signature Paint + Primer.

Here is a few images of the former makeup room, I mean nursery before the paint. 

Joel mumbled and grumbled the entire time he was taping.
"I hate painting, I said I'd never paint again after the Culver City house, this is so stupid blah blah blah" 

But here he is, hard at work!

And the finished product! 

I adore it! I love the turquoise accent color so much. If you are wondering, it's called Reflection Pool. The purplish lavender is called Floral Vista. 

Joel wanted to put together what little baby items we have so far. We have the co-sleeper on the far left, then a little rocker thing in the middle and a Tommee Tippee diaper genie-esque thing on the right.

Proud Papa standing in his hard days work!  He's excited now that it all is coming together!

I love it! Like seriously, it's the best looking room in our house so far. I'm inspired to paint more rooms/accent walls. Joel does not agree on that idea of course...seeing as we do rent and not own. I agree on that account, but we are going to be here for another year and 5  year months so we may as well enjoy our home while we can. We can always hire some manual labor to repaint it the ugly yellow color when we get ready to move. 

It's amazing what a little paint can do. Not only to a room, but to a man who up until this point hasn't really had much to do (pregnancy-wise), so this is huge. He's so proud and he deserves to be proud. His excitement is contagious. His smile at the nursery lights up the whole room. That's what matters. 

On a side note, Savannah was kicking up a storm yesterday. It was the first time I could actually see her movements from the outside. Which was FREAKY. Like OMG-THERE-IS-AN-ALIEN-IN-THERE-CAUSE-THAT-MOVEMENT-WASN'T-ME freaky! Sometimes she can kick me in a weird place where I'm like "OOOMPH!" Was that my bladder she just kicked? Is she playing soccer in there? Practicing kung fu? Ease up girlfriend...Momma is still getting used to this. 

And lastly, I feel super fat today. 

THE END