K’s room is finally scoring a touchdown

Yo yo, wuz up? I have so much stuff going on around the house that I haven’t even had time to sit down and blog! Yikes!

I am a serious glutton for punishment. Serious.

Hot off the tail of painting the new office, I thought it would be great to tackle Projects 19 and 21 from my to-do list…

  
(finish painting stairwell and fix messed up texture)

…which I’m mostly finished with, but not totally ready for a big “I finished these projects on my to-do list” reveal…

So anyway, I’ve been a painting. And if an entire office, a stairwell, and a full wall in the gameroom wasn’t enough painting for me, I got a wild hair to paint my daughter’s room as well!

See, I told you I’m a glutton for punishment. I must have a screw loose. I’ve got piles and piles of 1/2 finished projects around here
::ahem:: finish-flip-flopping-the-office-and-guest-room ::ahem::
yet I started another new project.

I love to start them… hate to finish them. 😉

My daughter K’s room looked like this when we bought the house over a year ago:

Yup, a football field. Cute for a boy’s room. Not so cute for a girlie-girl’s room.

Here’s what her room looked like, a year after we moved in, as of last Friday:

Can I get a womp, womp, womp, womp? Poor girl has lived in a football room for over a year.

Why has it taken me so long? Well, do you want the long excuse, or the short one? How about a medium one?

Okay, medium excuse… I had bigger fish to fry including the Barney Massacre and all the rest of the downstairs. And it has taken me a full year to get a plan together for how I want to do her room, and then muster up enough energy to execute the plan.

I spent an entire day priming those neon green walls — two coats of primer and you can still see the yard lines.

After the primer I did another two coats of semi-gloss white paint around the bottom of the room. Are you getting a moulding vibe yet?

That night I hit our local hardware store with a list and a mission; to purchase MDF and have them cut it down to 3.5″ strips for me.

I also had him do a few specialty cuts to frame out the window. The employee was not amused, to say the least. He did his job, and didn’t complain, but I could tell I was a huge annoyance to him. I’d probably be annoyed too if someone made me stand there and make 70 cuts.

Yes, I said 70 cuts. Our local hardware store charges twenty five cents per cut, so I ended up paying $17.50 in cuts alone, but it was well worth it.

*Tangent alert*

I read about 50 tutorials for board and batten and got the impression that I would need approximately 5 sheets of 4′ x 8′ MDF. WRONG. Trust me, I have loads of wood leftover. I can probably mould out another 2-3 rooms, easy.

Also, You can buy 3.5″ x 8′ pre-primed strips of MDF for about $7.50 each. Or you can buy a 4′ x 8′ sheet of MDF (not primed) for about $24. If you cut the sheet of MDF into 3.5″ strips, it makes 13 strips. To purchase 13 strips of the pre-primed, pre-cut strips would cost you $97.50! That is $73.50 MORE than buying a sheet and having our local hardware store cut it for you. I purchased 6 sheets, so by purchasing full sheets I saved a whopping $441 bucks. Four-Hundred-Forty-One-Dollars.

Peeps, buy the sheets and pay 25 cents per cut. And suck it up and prime them yourself. Unless you have loads of extra money to waste. Or throw away. Or burn. And in that case, still buy the sheets, and then send the extra money to me instead. 🙂

*End of Tangent*

So I got home and unloaded about 50 bazillion pounds of MDF from my trunk, and then I went to bed.

The next day (day 2 if you are keeping track) I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn and started on the big moulding project. I primed all the pieces that go around the window, but then got ‘over’ that real quick and primed everything else once it was nailed on the wall.

I’m going to save you a tutorial for now because a) they are all over the internet, and b) I am not finished yet, so I’ll give you the instructions l8r.

I spent the entire day cutting and hanging the MDF. Travis, my 9 year old, is a budding DIYer and was honestly the best helper I’ve ever had. He did most of the cutting and nailing (with strict supervision!). He’s a pro I tell ya. We had a great day together. I told him I’d pay him $10 to help me, but at the end of the day he told me I didn’t have to pay him “because it was fun, not work”. Awww. I paid him anyway.

As soon as I’m totally done with the room and my brain is functioning again (I’m so tired right now!) I’ll give you all my exact measurements and tell you how it all came together.

I spent today (day 3) puttying, caulking, and painting everything, but I don’t have pics yet because it was so dark by the time I finished.

But I have to say, this room is coming together so much more awesomespice than I even had in my mind. I’m so excited to finish all the trimming and painting and start decorating!

So far I’ve spent a total of 3 solid days working on this room. I’m beat and my back and shoulders are aching! Hopefully I’ll be done with all the structural part of her room (the board and batten and painting) by tomorrow so I can figure out how to decorate. I’m really looking forward to that!

I can’t wait to show you the big board and batten reveal tomorrow night!

Oh, and I totally want to give major props to Sarah and Emily for their awesome board and batten posts. I relied heavily on these posts to figure out what on earth I was doing. In addition to having great tutorials and tips for board and batten, their blogs are both top notch and some of my favorites.

Nester also had a board and batten party awhile ago and there are hundreds of links to different board and batten projects.