The Labunski's: Ouch

I honestly didn't expect painting our living room to be such an ordeal. Or so physically painful. But I got it all done in one day, with only one coat on one wall left by the time Nathan and the boys got back from visiting Aunt Kate and Cousin James in Springfield.

The most time consuming part was most definitely the prep work. Did you know they use a lot of glue to attach vinyl baseboard to the walls? And that the glue hardens into long strips of cement? Which then requires the application of a spackle knife to remove, taking pieces of the drywall with it? Which then requires a coat of spackle and two coats of primer? All before even touching the paint? Well, they do. And it does.

A few weeks ago, Nathan discovered that the scary wood paneling on our living room wall was only attached with nails to the full drywall behind it. It was a fairly simple endeavor to pull those pieces of wood off the drywall and then mud in the holes. Here's the before picture, just to remind you of the horror that was 1970's decorating. I look at this photo and hear the Psycho theme.

The paneling single handedly managed to make the room look dark, small, and dated. Even the unfinished drywall was an improvement. I prefer, however, to not feel like I'm living in a construction zone, if at all possible.

After about 4 hours of prep work, which included two coats of primer on the fireplace wall, I was finally ready to start actually painting. For the other three walls, we stuck to a light tan that had just a bit more yellow than the current tan, warming the room nicely. Since the room is pretty small, we wanted to keep all the colors pretty light. I finished one wall, got one coat on the other two walls, took a Dutch Bros break, put the 2nd coat on the two side walls, and finally got to tackle the accent wall (aka the fireplace wall).

Nathan and the boys got home right as I finished the first coat and had started cleaning up, to allow the first coat to dry. Nathan got the boys to bed and then made a beer run while I finished the last coat. Then it was clean up, shower time, and now beer time.

I like beer time.

Here's the finished result. Sorry it's not the greatest photo, it's kind of hard to get a good one when there's no ceiling light in the room and it's dark outside.

I must say, the fireplace is much more bearable now that it's not surrounded by dark wood. Nathan's very thankful that I won't be hounding him to tear the darn thing apart and tile it anytime soon.

The color combo makes me feel so peaceful. Not a bad thing when you have twin toddlers running around every day!

Speaking of toddlers...

The boys continue to grow grow grow. It's so much fun watching them pick up new words and see their deductive reasoning increase. I love that I can ask them to take off their shoes and put them away, and they'll take them off, line them up with the shoes on the correct sides, carry them to the closet, open the door, put them in the shoe basket, and close the door.

Unfortunately, cold season has really worked a number on the poor kids' ears. They both had ear infections a couple of weeks ago, were put on amoxicillin, and then we found out yesterday that Asher still had pretty major infections in both ears. No wonder the kid was so cranky all the time!!! The infection was so bad that his ear drum(s) actually burst this morning. So now not only is he on a more powerful antibiotic, but he's also getting ear drops twice a day for a week.

It sounded like they had a grand time at Aunt Kate's today, though. Here's a photo of them playing in the big sand pit at a park in Springfield, and a video of Levi playing with one of Cousin James' toys. Pretty hilarious.