Phase 2

Well phase 2 actually started much before phase 1 did but as you will see it was a lot more time consuming.  Lets start it off with a picture of what it looked like before we attacked it.

The first adjustment I made was during the wedding activities I moved the table so that I could see the TV and someone else could join me.  After the wedding we were discussing what we wanted to do to the house and one of the easier, cheaper things we could start with was paint.  Well lucky for me, I have a very talented husband who has experience with home renovations.  So one day he comes home from work with this crazy drawing of what he thought we should do in my scrapbook room.  I kind of looked at it and said "That's nice, how do we do it?" He chuckled a little bit and said well we have to start by getting the paint.  Our first couple painting experience was at the rental house when he decided he needed to teach me how to cut in.  After watching my mom spend a whole day painting a bathroom because she taped it all, he made it very clear that I had better learn how to do it without tape.  For those of you that don't know, Jon used to own his own renovation business and he is VERY comfortable with these small tasks.  I on the other hand had only done it once and that was brutal, those who saw my bathroom in college know what I am talking about.  So I quickly learned two things, 1. I goes much faster when Jon helps me 2. I need to cut in and he needs to roll.  There is something about that roller that gets out of control and I get it EVERYWHERE.  So one Friday night he surprised me with a can of paint and said lets get busy, so romantic a Friday night painting together.  So we did and I am pretty sure the two of us knocked out the whole room in all of about 2 hours.  I was quite excited and totally encouraged that maybe this project wouldn't take quite as long as he was saying.  Well as I would soon find out, painting the whole room was the fastest part.  Then came the stripes.  As soon as the paint dried Jon was very eager to start drawing on the wall to see what it was actually going to look like, so he set off with his level one night and got busy.  He drew a few sets of lines on the main wall and then complained that his arms were sore or something wimpy like that.  The next night he showed me how we needed to tape the room and all of the steps to painting the stripes.  It went a little like this...
1. Tape two of the 4 lines on the wall (2 on the top and 2 on the bottom or 2 on the left and 2 on the right)
2. Paint a layer of the base color, going inside out as to not bleed the "other color"
3. Let it dry and then paint a layer of accent color
4. Let it dry and the peel off the tape.
5. Start all over back at step 1

So, needless to say this took a long time.  3 of the 4 walls required steps 1-5 to be done twice and the other was required it 4 times.  So we dabbled at this process for about 3 weeks before I had enough.  My scrapbook room was a disaster and there was so much great scrapbook time I was missing out on.  I went a little crazy and all but kicked, stomped and screamed that this room needed to be done SOON!  So we locked ourselves in that room working on it the rest of the weekend and finished painting.  Then Monday after work we hung everything up, and it looks AMAZING!  I love it and just want to sit in here for hours, which is good because I have hours of work that can be done sitting at that table. 

So that is what we have been constructing over the last month, and I love it!  And now I think we will take a small break before we move on to phase 3, the bedroom.