If you think your house needs updating - this picture will make you feel better - really!

So here is the promised picture of our storage room - soon to be extra bedroom for son. Beautiful colour right? Maybe - just not in this room. As you can see, this is the burgundy wall colour that I had chosen in a baby-raising mental haze a few years ago. It certainly goes beautifully with the vinyl floor and the cedar ceiling...

So - if you are like me and have NEVER done anything yourself - this would be pretty intimidating. As in most areas of my life; however, I just dove in. Hubby gave in about the ceiling and agreed that it would need to be painted - white. We also agreed that the 'gorgeous' flourescent lighting would need to find a new home, and that the flooring was not bedroom-worthy.

Here's what happened next. I worked out with my son a theme for his room. He is crazy for all things to do with boating, so we decided together that the walls would be sand coloured and the accents would be a cottage white (including the every-lovely cedar ceiling). I went to Benjamin Moore and was told I needed a sealer-type paint for my ceiling, and that I could use this special new paint of theirs called "Aura" that primes and paints in 1 coat for the walls!!! Yay! More money than I would have thought possible was spent on these two cans of product - but I felt confident that I would be thrilled with the results.

Then I foolishly left the product in the room downstairs while I wondered around my house avoiding the task at hand. It turns out that after the initial "dive" into this project I felt less than inclined to swim...

My mother - who is a work warrior at the brave age of 70 - found these items and cheerfully went to work to 'do me a favour'. Within about 4 hours she had the entire room painted - no kidding. Giant problem #1: I had chosen "barley" from Benjie Mo. Guess what colour that turns out to be? Yellow. Actually a fairly bright yellow. Grrr....

So now I have a new boys bedroom that is now a cheerful kitchen yellow colour. Some tears of frustration must be allowed here.

There. Sniffling done. Yellow? What??!??

So here is lesson #1 for painting that I learned - like everything else in my life - the hard way: Benjamin Moore, Home Depot, Rona, and pretty much every other home building centre sells these little tiny paint pucks (cheaply) that they will tint to the shade that you are ordering. You then go home, slap a little on the walls and see if your colour is anything close to what you thought the little postage stamp sample would end up being. It's well worth the extra trip to save a LOT more time and a LOT more money.

I will say this though: while "barley" is certainly not for this room - I am fairly impressed with Aura. It didn't quite cover the burgundy to perfection - but it's pretty dang close. Impressive if somewhat expensive.

Stay tuned - see what I can do with the yellow.

If I can do it, you can too.

Hope you are enjoying,


...a project by Mama