I love paint SO MUCH.

I love paint a LOT. I bought wayyyyy too much of it for this project. (Therefore, technically not a *swap* activity. But it's crafty, right!??!)

Two of my roommates moved out, and I get to move into their (bigger) room. (Swapping rooms = a swap.) And because I didn't care to feel like a baby boy in a baby boy room, I decided I really, really had to paint the gungy periwinkle walls. You can see where all the pictures have been in the entire life of this paint job. And the paint is entirely matte. MATTE. Ick. Plus, I am of the opinion, I realize, that you don't feel like you live in a room, if it's a color that you wouldn't actually wear on your body. I mean, I just look terrible in periwinkle.

Here's a before pic, complete with yards and yards and yards of blue tape. This is over 60 yards of painters' tape -- I used an entire roll and then some. This room has FOUR WINDOWS and a closet in addition to the door -- and crown molding and baseboards. That's a lot of edges.

I even managed to find the original paint can for this paint job, and it took me about five minutes to pop it open because it was Rusted Shut. I couldn't remember whether my roommates painted it that color when we moved in, which is clearly not true. And indeed, the label on the original can entirely proves my theory that it was a baby boy's room.

Oh little Harrison . . . how old are you now? You HAVE to be at least five . . . that's how long we've lived here. Maybe you're in high school by now . . . definitely time to paint!

I triple-plastic-dropclothed the hardwood floors and THEN laid down paper bags and THEN made a paint station in the middle of that. No risk-taking. (Note the five million cans of paint? Yeah, I overbought. But, the three colors I picked I could live inside forever, so I guess I'll just paint everything those colors forever for the rest of my life. ;o)

My vision: to do a sort of swirly glaze paint job in kind of ocean colors, using the periwinkle as a base coat. In a sort of eggshell finish, and so you can see the color depth = entirely the opposite of the flat, flat periwinkle walls. So I picked a GREAT color called "Deep Blue Sea" as the sort of basic topcoat, and then a dark dark blue and a dark dark purple as additional accent/mixing colors, just in case.

I get to, therefore, paint with my hands and sponges a lot. Because I totally love paint.

Here's coat number one! It's a little patchy, but when I glimpse it from down the hall as I'm eating lunch, I go "EEEEeeeeeeeeprettty!" Which I'm taking as a good sign. I don't know how many more passes I'm going to do . . . stay tuned!