Advertising is insidious. In the 'Bounty pack' given to mums after the birth of their baby there is a hardcover book for the baby. It is provided by Resene, a paint manufacturer and has no reading merit whatsoever. It lists different paint colours by trade name, along with pictures. It is a very clever advertisement and not at all for the baby. I've recycled them in the past.
About a year ago I was reading 'Little Treasures' magazine and saw a room that won the annual Resene baby room paint competition. Parents are invited to submit plans and the winners are given $500 to complete their designs. It is fantastic advertising of course for Resene, and makes a great story for the magazine. Most of the time I consider these kinds of stories way out there - most children I know have a very basic bedroom, needing little more than their bed, curtains, books and toys. The room and furniture is generally functional, and often cast offs. This is quite appropriate - it is expensive enough looking after a child without all their stuff looking like it came from House and Garden magazine.
But one of these stories somehow got under my skin. I loved the sound of the main paint colour used in the story (sweetcorn). Finally, in the midst of all this reno madness I decided to paint the girls' rooms. I got a testpot of sweetcorn and tried it out. It looks fantastic in the baby's room, but too bright in the Sweetheart's room. It has taken five testpots to find the colour we are going with in there a warm, pastely green called 'Conifer.'
The point of all this chat is a brief reflection on the influence of advertising. I suspect that even though I disliked the baby book and felt that most of the rooms in the stories were over the top, somehow the brand has stayed with me.
Anyway, painting.
I had to do this in a lot of parts. Cleaning the baby's room was a task I did over a day - just moving things around to make it easier to paint. I then got out the mop and washed the walls. I then used my fancy putty-for-idiots that changes colour when dry. I like puttying. I find it very soothing. Finally, I was ready to go. The next day I taped the skirting board and decided to go for it! I thought that I would start with one wall. Given that I was doing this around childcare it wasn't until the baby's afternoon nap that I started (probably not ideal for a children's room). I managed to do the second coat later in the day and the room was only a little smelly that night. The next day I decided to push through, and painted in the morning while the baby was awake. This was tricky. The children wandered around but I did manage to distract them a bit with food and games. I discovered how hard painting can be and found it easier on the clothes to paint wearing nothing! 'Cutting in' using a brush was OK, but I quickly found rolling hard on the arm.
I sped paint. I was dripping in sweat but I got it done. The kids were quite cranky waiting this time, and unfortunately the baby's sleep was short. The room looks pretty good though!
The local glazier also came to replace the bathroom window (because the old bathroom fan is stuck in it). He put in some safety glass, this was a reminder that we need to start replacing the glass around the house with safety glass. So far we have safety glass in one window :)
It took an hour to change over the window. They also brought back the bathroom cabinet door - they added a nice piece of mirror to the front.
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