It's NOT About the Wall!

    I have been doing a lot of home improvements lately.  What is that all about?  I feel so stuck in this house so much, and I don't really like where I live as much as I would like to like where I live.  So I try to keep the house looking nice on the inside at least.  The outside desperately needs work too, but I only have so much in me.  Last week I painted the two main rooms of the house, the living room and the dining room.  It was a bit chaotic while that was going on, but I am so glad I did it.  The walls looked so dirty before I painted and the dining room was really dark.  Now it is all a nice, soothing blue sky blue.   My latest project is pictured above.  There is a window in our living room that I have wanted to put stained glass in since we got the house, but we could never afford it.  Finally I realized that I could paint the window to look like stained glass...so that is what I did.   Also during this process I painted the entrance way stairwell into the house.  This is another project I have meant to do for 7 years.  This was a challenging project as the wall was stuccoed 35 or so years ago.  So i had to paint over that.  Painting over stucco is hard...but I got it done.  It is a huge sense of accomplishment to complete these projects and for my house to have a new fresh look.  I am planning on painting my kitchen and bathroom too, but not until well after the holidays.  Now it is time to enjoy Christmas and all the fun Christmas projects.

  I do want to share a little story though.  The very first project I did was in October.  I repainted my office.  The walls in there were a light gray and looking pretty dirty.  I spend so much time in my office I just wanted to lighten things up.  It took way longer to complete this project than I imagined.  It had been over a year since I painted a room and I forgot how long it took to do that.  Last fall I painted two bedrooms and moved the kids around and really worked at redoing the rooms to make them nice for them.  Two things were going on as I was painting my office.  I touched up some areas in my daughter's room and within days she had peeled off all the paint from the spot on the wall that I had just repaired.  In my son's room there is a spot under his window that was completely destroyed last year from water coming in through the window.  Before I moved him into that room, I completely rebuilt the wall under the window and painted the whole room.  Somehow he started peeling the paint off the wall in that area under the window, revealing a new hole and a huge area without paint.  So now I have two areas that need to be repaired and repainted.  It is hard to fix rooms that kids are living in.  So I had these two problems.  I patched them up but haven't repainted them yet.  Instead I painted my office, and within a day of me finishing the painting and putting the room back together, my two year old son got a hold of a pencil and scribbled all over the walls.  (Pencil does not erase off of freshly painted walls).  I was absolutely devastated.  I have never been so mad at my little guy before.  I couldn't look at him.  I went into my office and sat at my desk and cried.  My husband came in.  He said to me these words "I am sorry honey, I understand that it isn't about the wall."  WOW!  What a moment.  I felt so understood.  I was still mad but his words helped.  I went upstairs alone to regroup.  He put the kids in the car and went and bought some marvelous stuff to clean off the wall, and he cleaned it for me.

   I can't tell you how nice it was for him to understand that it wasn't about the wall, that it was about me trying to make the house nice for my family, and to have a nice space for myself, and most importantly, feeling like I have control over a situation, that I can make a plan and follow through and really feel like I accomplish something.  I am so blessed to have an amazing husband that gets that....and who supported me through that bump in the road.  People....the words you say when someone is upset matter, and saying the right words can make all the difference in the world.