November Date - Paint a Wall

Phew...I have three days to fit five more posts in to make my goal. As expected, I was off the map for Thanksgiving. That will probably show up soon. But for today, I have a fun post for you all.

On our anniversary, we drove down to Cedar City, which I mentioned. But I did not mention that we put together another list of fun dates for the year. I am going to be better about labeling them so I can find them again. November was up first and we planned to paint a wall.

There are a lot of walls in our house obviously, but it didn't take long to find the one we wanted. There is a lonely wall in the computer room. It is a focus wall because as you walk in, it is right there in front of you, but we have never had a dedicated decoration for this wall. We put up some Mother's day cards there for a while. We put up some clipboards with kids art, but nothing has stuck. This is how it looked before.

We put a lot of thought into what should go on there. We love to paint fun designs as shown by our hot air balloons. But after scouring the internet, we came up with something different. It involved paint AND boards. We bought some long pine boards and went to work on them. Well...we put the kids to work on them. (They get to be included in some of our dates.)

They sanded away for a long time and then it was time to stain them. We picked a medium stain. The pine boards were transformed.

Almost done. Sorry the lawn looks like a yard sale. We cleaned the garage the same day. Good to get projects done together.

Boards were happening outside and paint was happening inside. We taped off the edges and June and I went to work doing the brush work on the sides.

Tyler didn't make it into a lot of these photos because he was taking the pictures. It should be noted that this was the weekend he had kidney stones!! Luckily, his pain wasn't too bad but I am still majorly impressed that he was able to do so much before his procedure the following Monday. The wall is coming together.

Don't forget the detail work. We decided not to paint the outlet covers since some were connected to the wall. June did a great job helping.

Our boards are now stained and sealed. They are drying and waiting for their debut.

In the computer room, tape was coming off and covers were being put back on. I loved that all the girls helped with this project.

Tyler had a bit of a struggle getting the base board off, but it was important because we had a new board to go in its place. Here we are checking out how it will look. (Tyler is post procedure now. This was a couple days later after the worst pain was under control, but I'm pretty sure he was very drugged for most of the board placement.)

Measure seven times, cut once. (Is that how it goes?) Oh, and make sure it is level.

We put them up throughout the day. It looks like we are almost done. Handy that the outlet switches fit between boards.

Check it out! I think we did an amazing job. I also like getting handy with Tyler. He has a good eye for design and perfection.

Here you can see the before and after again.

I'm still deciding if I want to put a big wreath up in the middle, but for right now, I'm loving the new look of the room. The computer lab has a whole new feel. It is great! Happy November date to us.