comtemplative pausing

work has begun on the room that will become girlfriend girl's BIG GIRL ROOM.

i emptied it (mostly) and moved baby bear's crib into the other room with her sisters. (an epic manuever that requires complete disassembly and reassembly of said crib since the stupid thing doesn't fit through the doorways)

Emptying the room like that made me pause and look around.

this room, this tiny room, has been the most neglected room in the house since we bought it 8 years ago.

when we moved in, 6 weeks before the Boy was born, it became the Box Room--repository of everything still homeless and unpacked after our move.

the house was a fixer upper (to put it mildly) and the paint colors...umm, a bit scary. and they still exist in the back of the closet.

a lovely mustard yellow, rolled over top of what i can only describe as a Pepto-Bismol pink. only the rolling was done, never cut in anywhere, so a ragged border of the pink encircled the entire room. it was truly stunning.

when PPD hit shortly after Little Man's birth, i would stay awake night after night while my family slept, emptying boxes, painting walls and a mural, fixated on making a nursery for my baby boy.

the empty room showed me the built in shelving that i painted to match that little guy's first bedroom.

when baby #3 was born, we were in the midst of an all out renovation/addition. tiny tim had health issues requiring weekly specialist appointments in the city. we were also running our own fledging business, which was our sole source of income. we were running running running running...

when the new window went into that tiny room, mr. googiedaddy framed in, insulated and slapped a piece of drywall over the hole of the old window. and that was as far as it went.

i also began another mural, in an attempt to turn it from a nursery into more of a big boy room, as Little Man was 3. that was never finished.

there were more important things to do. 

 those black lines are the lovely piece of drywall. what you can't really see in this photo are all the screws in the drywall that add to its...uh, 'je ne sais quoi'.

when the bulk of the addition was finished, and googiedaddy and i moved to our new room, the girls moved to their room, and Little Man moved into his BIG BOY ROOM, the tiny room was designated "play room".

money being tight, i decided that any color from the "oops" bin at Home Depot would be fine. it just needed to be bright and "playful"

i was wrong.

i managed to score what must be the most unappealing, unattractive, hideous color known to man. it does not exist in nature. the mustard and pepto pink combo would have been more pleasing.

when i emptied the room, i found a bit of it peeking through a chip in the wall.

this photo does not do the flourescent seafoam teal justice. i can only imagine what the actual paint chip was called. probably something like "ectoplasm on crack"

i also started another mural. never finished.

when monkey #4 was due to arrive, i determined once again to have a nursery. against googiedaddy's wishes, i mixed up some leftover gallons from the bigger girl's room, and random stuff hanging around, and came up with a pale pink~~more or less matching the pink of her $20 crib bedding that i found on walmart.com. i painted right over the unfinished sheetrock and screws.

with the determination that only a pregnant woman can fully muster, i told him that IF and WHEN he got around to finishing the spackle and trim in that room i would be HAPPY to paint it again.

and then i hung curtains.

and then i painted started a fourth mural in that room, my baby girl's name to match her bedding:

also, never finished.

and so, 8 years later, the room sits {mostly} empty, waiting for its nth reincarnation.

and i'm a little sad.

but i've also determined that it's going to be done {somewhat} correctly this time. the window area is finally going to be spackled and sanded. the trim will be...um, trimmed. the glow in the dark stars have been pulled from the ceiling, and the ceiling will be painted over for the first time since it was Little Man's nursery. 

the only problem? poor googiedaddy is currently working 12-15 hour days in 100+ degree heat. so the spackling and sanding and trimming and painting will be done by yours truly, the momma.  

have i mentioned that googiedaddy spent the better part of his life first as a sheetrocker/finisher and then contractor specializing in custom trims/wall frames/woodwork? i {lovingly} call him the "Wall Snob". but he's going to have to deal, because this room is getting done in my signature googiemomma style~~which is composed of equal parts:

{artistry}
{impatience}
{vision}
and
{self-doubt}
with just a dash of
{"i've seen that done once on HGTV, i can totally do it myself"-ism}

i can't wait to see what happens. :0)