Aaron and I are planning to paint several rooms in our house during our vacation in August. The living room will say goodbye to its pastel ragroll of the 1990’s, the dining room will shed its southwestern feel, and the smallest bedroom will start its journey from cat/sewing/storage room to small person’s living space. (Don’t want to call it a “nursery” yet, being that we’re not even trying for kids yet, you know. Don’t want to get Mom all riled up.) 😉
See, I figure that it would be unfair to say that I wanted the bedroom painted before someone — no matter how small — moves in, then to shirk the actual responsibility of painting it because pregnant women shouldn’t be exposed to strong chemical fumes. So, we’re doing the painting together, before we get our bareback going on.
I already have a very wide theme planned: anime. (Of course.) Totoro would be a good theme for babies of either gender, really, and easily supplemented by either Hello Kitty and general cuteness or mecha and other boyishness. Plus, I think it would be fun to custom-paint some pillowcases and light-switches.
Thinking about furnishing and decorating our future child’s room made me think about this future child, and how we’ll deal with parenthood. It’s finally becoming something that’s planned, that’s going to happen, instead of speaking hypothetically. It’ll be interesting, sure, and exhausting, and everything I’ve heard it is. But I think that, between Aaron and me, we’ll do OK. We were raised differently enough, but turned out similar enough, that I don’t think we’ll screw our firstborn up too much. No more so than most, anyway.
For now, though, I think I’ll stick to thinking about things like what color to paint the bedroom.
squeeeeeeeeee smallish schnuth-type person squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 😀
you should decorate it in ANPANMAN!!!!! 😀
oh. and a good color with totoro would be maybe a nice pale yellow? nothign too yellowey.
go here and launch the “color visualizer” – the one i like “glad yellow” and “springtime” (which is a pale green but still gender-neutral and cute with they greys of Totoro)
DUDE! Anpanman would RULE! Although he’s generally considered a boy’s cartoon character in Japan, no one in the US would know. 🙂
Picking a color is going to be quite a challenge. I was thinking pale yellow, too, but Aaron seems opposed to pale yellow or powder blue. Maybe we can go with an olive or mint green or something like that.
i think olive might be too dark, but mint green seems to be the Gender Neutral Color of Choice lately 😀 just make sure you make it a flat paint and not a semi-gloss. blech. you can get washable flats now – i think Behr makes some. Behr is a little pricey but the room is so small you wont need more than 2 cans, i’m guessing. 😀
But if you don’t go semi-gloss… oh, washable flats, eh? Now there’s a thought. That would be cool.
Maybe not olive or mint green, but a light neutral green that’s not bright and minty. Like a dusty sort of light green. I’d like that.
Since I ended up with a bunch of free and cheap plants, maybe that gift card to Home Depot can go toward defraying paint costs…
yeah, the washable flat is nice but sorta hard to work with, ask the Behr ppl @ home depot to give you pointers on working with it – we put it in john’s kitchen in his house in toledo.
kitchens and kids rooms should really be the only places you need washable walls – i looooooooove flats for livings rooms and such, it makes the lights all nice and non-bouncy-glarey <3333. so regular flats would be cheaper.
it's either this or this – not sure 😀
Flats are nice but should be tested for streaking. That happens in my dining room. It’s obviously a lot more noticeable with dark colors. I like semi-gloss or satins myself, but to each their own. Do you plan to paint the ceilings white, or are you going with a uni-color scheme??? Is that Anime the whole house, or just the future Schnuth’s room???
theoretically, anime will only be the theme of the lil’ schnuthie’s room. in practice, there’s nothing keeping the whole house from being anime-themed, depending on how many DVDs and manga and books and laserdiscs we have lying about. 😉
we’re planning to keep the ceilings white.
i recommend you give all the ceilings a fresh white coat as well (before you do the walls) – it REALLY cleans up a room, no matter how much you may think they dont need it!