On patience and painting

Last month I wrote a post called Holding on to the past. If you missed it, I talked about how we had ordered new furniture and bedding for my daughter’s room. Because she suffers from what many of us suffer from: too much stuff and not enough space to put it all, she finally agreed to part with a sizable collection of My Little Ponies, Littlest Pet Shop Pets, Barbies and all the various and sundry paraphernalia that accompanies said collections. Save for that one special item we retrieved from the giveaway box, all the others toys she agreed to part with are gone in order to make room for the new furniture. Her old desk and chair and a very large storage unit/entertainment center from IKEA are also gone. Her bed is still here, but it’s disassembled and will most likely be picked up this weekend.

The redecorating process is going as planned, just not as scheduled.

I received a call on Tuesday informing me that the furniture tentatively scheduled to be delivered July 15 will instead be delivered on Monday. Yeah, this coming Monday.

Fabulous.

I had planned to take my sweet time getting my daughter’s room painted. That’s all changed. It has now become a bit of a rush job. Having said that, a rush painting job does not equate to sloppy or bad painting job. I’m fairly laid back about certain jobs I do around the house, but I’m a little particular when it comes to painting.

Soup Nazi photo courtesy of photobucket.com

Which would be fine if my daughter wasn’t so helpful. She REALLY wanted to help me paint. She’s asked me roughly 74 times when that would happen. She wasn’t really interested in the patching and cleaning of the walls and baseboards, the removal of the outlet covers, the retexturing of the mysterious hole in the wall and whatnot.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of her helping me paint. Like I said, I’m a little particular about how a room should be painted. But we both shared some valuable lessons today. She practiced patience while I performed all those mundane but necessary tasks before the actual painting began

She learned how to roll paint on the wall

I learned that I actually didn’t freak out when things weren’t done exactly the way I would do it

(Okay, I freaked out a little. I also rolled over that spot.)

She rolled, I cut in. We’ve got a day’s worth of painting yet to do. But I’m confident we can work as a team and have her room ready before the Monday furniture delivery without any major incidents.

Maybe just some minor ones…

Update: That previous picture looked kinda weird. Here's the wall after I cut it in with a brush.