Experiencing "Labor" Day

I have always looked forward to Labor Day Weekend...not only is at an extended weekend, but it is usually spent camping, having barbeques, and hanging out with friends or family. That's how I have always spent it.  This year, instead of doing something fun and relaxing, Alan and I decided that we should finish a long, overdue project.  Back in March, I started painting the boys bedroom. Between wrong paint colors to begin with and Alan slowly working on the wood work, it had been 5 months and we still weren't done!


Now the design/appearance we were after looks something like this:

Only the bottom half would be light brown/tan instead of white and the top blue.

You would think, not too hard, right?? Alan is very talented with building things and he has done several projects for our home that have turned out great so I trust his opinon and judgement.  However, this project turned out to be a nightmare!  Something that should have taken two days from start to finish ended up taking 6-7 full days. We truly worked hard or "labored" all weekend! 

Our first issue was of course paint colors.  After that was solved, our next biggest problem became the wood slats. Painting on top of the wood slats next to the textured walls did not look good, so we had to figure out what other options we had.  Alan did not want to spend more money to buy wood to cut and put in between all the slats and there was no way we were going to rip out all the woodwork.  So our last option was to make stripes out of the slats. The big battle became what colors to use.  We tried all our options for the slats, baseboard and chair-railing.  We couldn't agree and didn't love one thing in particular.  We finally decided to go with all chocolate brown....

But when it was all painted, we didn't like it!

After looking at it all day Sunday, we knew we had to change it. By this point, I told Alan, he could do whatever he wanted. I was done!

He chose all white, which did look better. It just wasn't the look I was going after. Alan thought we could have it all repainted by noon on Monday.  Since it was his birthday that day, we wanted to do something fun later on. Unfortunately, that's not how it went.

We really struggled making all the stripes have nice straight lines.  The paint kept bleeding through the tape on the textured walls.  We would paint white, touch up blue, touch up white, touch up blue, etc. etc.  We finally discovered that a little caulking and "Monster" painters tape did the trick. Eventually, at 11 pm, we finished...3 full roles of painters tape, 8 different gallons and colors of paint, and hours and hours later we completed this project! 

Now, there's still lots of decorating and some finishing touches, but here it is...

While talking with a friend about the challenges and frustrations of this project, she said "I think there is a lesson to be learned for you and Alan, not just the project itself."  After thinking about that, I have to agree completely!  We learend a lesson the hard way about communication, compromise, and patience! By Saturday night we were both exhausted, very frustrated, and disagreed about anything and everything!  On Monday, we really had to pull together to finish this project. Our attitudes changed and we really worked well together. I know it sounds silly, but I really think future projects will go much smoother next time. That's when we're up for doing another project!! It won't be any time soon, I can guarantee that!