Painting Our Bedroom

This past weekend was THE weekend for us to get our big Summer task accomplished; Painting our Bedroom.

This has been a slow project of remodeling our bedroom, and making a space that we are both happy to be in. See, our bedroom has had to function as an office as well, and to accomplish this, we got ourselves a Murphy-bed a little over three years ago. And though I was against this type of bed, I have to admit that my hesitations were unfounded. We do live in a tiny New York City apartment, and every inch has to be functional and not wasted. But the rest of the room has been a hodge-podge of Ikea furniture that used to be in the livingroom, or in the kid’s room. Outside of the bed, everything else in our room is second hand news.

Two years ago, we did a complete re-do on the kid’s bedroom. She was growing out of little kid stuff, and was knocking hard at being a tween, so we wanted to give her a room that felt more appropriate to who she is. When we finished up the kid’s space, the wife and I said that our room was next.

Two years later, after much, and I mean MUCH, debate – we have landed on what we want, can afford, and most importantly, fit into our space.

To start this whole process, we had to start with the walls. Well, I started with the walls by patching holes, sanding, and getting everything ready. When I patch the holes in our walls (these are the anchor holes for shelves, hooks, and pictures) it is a walk down the history of the wife and I in the apartment. All the different arrangements we have tried before the kid and after. I can also say that with over fifteen years of patching holes, I am getting pretty good at it.

Then this weekend, we painted. The ceiling got a nice hue of primer white, while the walls got a good treatment of this aqua/blue color that has made the bedroom have this strange New England beach house feel. The furniture will be white with natural wood for the doors, drawers, and handles. I still need to finish painting the rest of the dark wood trim white, but it’s not a big room and I can knock that out in another weekend.

When it was all completed, besides feeling exhausted and aching in weird parts of my body, there was a satisfaction in accomplishing a task that will help us relax. Sometimes, it feels like we are still coming out of Covid. What I mean by that is that we are still hanging on to some of our “bunker mentality” which is manifesting in the fact that we haven’t allowed us to have a room, a space, that is for us. Covid made us try to make the kid’s life as normal as possible, and be comfortable. She came first, and everything else, especially if it was for us, could be put off.

It’s taken us awhile to say that the kid’s okay, we did our job very well, and that we shouldn’t feel guilty if we want to do something nice for ourselves. Like painting the walls in our bedroom.