Tye and I decided because the boys have to share a room- they were entitled to the biggest room in the house. Emily has been occupying this room because it was painted pink and purple by the previous home owners and was super cute and her furniture matched beautifully. So she has been enjoying the wonders of a large room. The boys, however are busting out at the seams (their toys are everywhere). We didn't come to this realization easily or maybe it should have been made years ago. Tye, being the awesome dad and creator that he is, had transformed the boys room into a medieval castle. It took a lot of time and is so awesome, but the castle is built into the wall so it is not moving anywhere. Maybe we shouldn't have done all this cool work because now what do we do? (by the way as a side note we actually never finished the boys old room-we still had to paint the top walls and never did) Emily being the understanding daughter that she is has found a way to accept the castle room and make it "girly." She and Tye have come up with a lot of good ideas and color schemes to turn this boy room into a girl one.

This is how Emily's room began. Sorry it is a little blurry. These were the only pictures I could find at this time.

Now this is where the adventure begins. Tye, myself and Emily head off to the Home depot to pick out some colors for the boys new room and Emily's new room. Tye and I decide on navy blue and white. (we didn't bring the boys because there are way too many paint colors to choose from and who knows what colors they would have come up with). Emily came up with some colors which we will discuss much later because we have to deal with the boys first.

We bought only a quart of paint to see if it was the right color and would actually cover the pink and purple. After about 3 coats of blue paint on a small corner of a wall it was decided that a primer was probably needed. The nice guys at Home depot told us the paint and primer mix which we got would be just fine-it was not. We had to pick up some stuff from Ace hardware and while there told them what we were doing and they suggested we needed a white primer. We bought it and primed the whole room-two coats.

Tye made a bunch of little sketches of the room and colored them different ways, so we could see all our options. We finally decided on blue on bottom, white chair rail in middle and tan on top (we had a couple cans of tan paint left over from previous home owners-same tan the rest of the house is painted) This is what it looked like after one coat. I was a little worried.

Here is a funny side story. We let the kids help us paint the first coat of blue. We had them all dressed in old clothes and told them to be so careful. We were smart and had plastic covering the whole carpet and them sheets over that. All the kids were busy painting and I grabbed the paint container. I guess I was a little distracted with the kids and spilled dropped the my paint container on the floor. The exact thing we hopped the kids wouldn't do. So that is our paint murder mark-compliments of April.

After 2 coats of blue we painted the top half tan. Then we admired our work and said "This doesn't look good, What is wrong with that blue?" I sent a picture to my sister and she told us to go back to Home Depot because there was something wrong with our paint. So we did. Luckily, there was a very nice knowledgeable lady working that night and she told us we needed a primer tinted blue. Dark paints don't have any white in them and are see threw, so you need a tinted primer. We would have loved to know that the first day. She got us on our way with the right stuff and offered to give us some more blue paint. We said we had enough and were on our way.

So we primed the room that night with the tinted primer.

Here is one coat of blue

Here is the wall with two coats of blue. It was beginning to look a lot better.

We ended up putting 3 coats of paint over the blue primer. Have you been counting with me then number of coats of paint on this lower wall. I have 8 so far. We definitely got in over our heads and did a lot more work than we bargained for. After the walls were done I painted all the chair rails and all the baseboards. Then we installed the chair rail and I repainted to cover the nail holes. Then we discovered the blinds wouldn't fit and had to rip out the chair rails in the windows. I have to go back and repaint the window and a few other places. Here is the finished room. When we move the boys in I might post some more pictures.

Now you realize I gave you the shortened version. This whole project took us a week-which included the holiday weekend to finish. Ithink the walls look black in these picture but it really is navy blue. I think I will put a few blue shelves on the walls.