Sunday night we started by removing everything out of Caleb’s room.  It’s so refreshing to start clean!  (He’s still sorting what to keep and what to get rid of so his space stays organized.)

Then we ripped up that 45 year old red shag carpet, and peeled the wall paper.  He liked the wallpaper and it was in excellent condition, but I had an older boy, calmer environment in mind.  And the shag was starting to disintegrate.  It was high quality stuff with a nice jute backing, but every time we vacuumed it filled the tank with red yarn.

Then there was significant damage to repair from the professionals jacking our foundation.  None of the doors shut anymore and there was a lot of cracking and buckling.  Darren doesn’t like how I fix cracks (I just slap it together) so he nominated himself for that job.

He pulled off the entire door unit, casing and all.  The wall will have to be recut and the header straightened so the doors will shut again.  The lazy way to fix that is to just trim the door…..but we decided to do it right.

I carried all the stuff we had already purchased into the room, so I could see it in that light and pick paint colors.  I always use Behr paint.  I’ve tried more expensive stuff, but liked Behr’s performance better.  I chose “Sterling” for the walls, and “Anonymous” (in porch paint) for the floor.  My mom got that amazing paint fan in 2006 when they did a massive home remodel, and it’s still really handy.
I started by painting the trim, since we were still waiting on the crack patches to dry.  (The fan sped that up nicely.)  It took 3 coats of paint (with primer in it) to cover up the wood stain.

Then I cut in with a brush while Caleb and Dub rolled.  Neither of them were awesome painters, but I never even tried to paint until I was 24 and owned my own home.  It was no big deal to go back over the bare spots when they were worn out and in the other room.  We kept baby wipes handy for quick wiping their mess ups off the trim.   They did save me a lot of work.

By evening I was ready to paint the floor.  We had already pull up all the staples and pounded in nails so they were flush.  I didn’t do any sanding, just vacuumed it really well.  We used porch paint, and I globbed it on thick.  The nice thing about painting floors is no drips!

This is just the plywood subfloor painted.  We’d love to do hardwood at some point, but painting the subfloor is perfect for our budget right now, and the area rug hides most of the seams.  At this point, I’m exhausted.  I’ve been to the hardware store 4 times!  I was hoping to be done and moved in, but the crack patching took a whole day longer than I had anticipated.  Now it’s time to let the floor cure, and plan a trip to IKEA ;).