Big Change

So, there has been a big change around here today.  Elliot is in a big bed.  And so far, no noise from their room!  Could it possibly be that he is going to transition to a big kid bed with no issues?

There are a lot of boring reasons why we decided to do this big bed move three months into our stay in Costa Rica (three months?  How did that happen?), but I am really sure you don't want to hear about that all.  Anyway, let's get on to the fun part...

So we found a bed that another language school student had made and it was lovingly painted royal blue.  Ok, with the risk of offending people, royal blue is awful!  Sure it matched the Bob the Builder mattress and that's great if you have a royal blue thing going on.  But, well, we don't.  Forrest's bed spread is a lovely shade of green with tan foliage, and well, I have a thing.  Noah laughs at me and says, "yes, you have a thing."  My thing is I like things to make sense together.  And I am pretty sure royal blue Bob the Builder and tan and sage don't make sense together.  But the great part about this was I knew this was going to cost me next to nothing to remedy the problem.

So, yesterday after school, we found the paint store and the hardware store (yes, they are different here) and got some sandpaper and a quart of what I thought was a lovely shade of green paint.  See, I was trying to get out of my comfort zone, you know pick something other than khaki or tan or some other neutral tone.  So I thought green.  Green is good.  And I have a brown blanket and it will match Forrest's bed and all will be well.

And then we started painting.

The boys really wanted to help with the project, so we let them help sand the bed and paint a couple of the support boards that go under the mattress and bottom of the bed.  Yeah, well, it didn't look great.  Sorta like a bowl of mint ice cream.  But I thought maybe it wouldn't be as bad on the bed.  Yeah.  No.

I got done with the first coat last night and I was so disappointed!  Goodness, it was awful!

So this morning, I went back to the paint store and got the darkest chocolateist brown I could find.  Oh, and interesting note about the paint store, they don't have color swatches you can take home.  When you go in and tell them you want a particular color, they pull out their swatches that are on a ring, you know, like a designer would have.  When you pick you color, they put them back in the special box under the counter. My guess is it costs too much to keep swatches for people to just take.

Anyway.  So, then, we needed bedding for this bed.  I went to one store and all they had were pink sheets.  Yeah, whole store, just pink sheets.  So I took another taxi further away and found a wider selection, like about 6 colors, all polyester or poly cotton blend.  Sigh.  And the worst part is, I bought bedding for the boys in January, but left it in Michigan because we didn't have twin beds in this house.  Anyway, I settled on a sage green and brought them home.

And then it was time to paint the bed brown.  And after the first few strokes I looked at Noah and said, "I should have just stuck with what I know.  Neutrals!"  Oh, my!  It looks a million times better!

And after it dried we took it upstairs, put it together, and we have one happy little boy!  I am hoping he really does well with the transition and we don't have any issues.  It makes things all the more complicated when he shares a room with his not very much older than him brother.

 Tomorrow we will hang a few prints that I found over at vintageprintables.com, where they have a great variety of vintage public domain prints you can print for free.  I put those in some frames our landlady said we could use and they turned about fantastic! Amazing what a little (of the right color) paint and a few printouts can do!