Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I'm an idiot and a chalk wall

This past weekend we went on a cleaning spree.  Kalia had been sick pretty much since her first birthday party (her one year check up was that Monday - I'm pretty sure she caught it there - darn not first thing in the morning appointments!), so once she started sort of being on the up and up, I felt the need to sanitize everything.  And I do mean everything.  Like 3300 + square feet of everything.

Yeah, I know, still doesn't explain why I'm an idiot...I'm getting there.

We started in the living room and conditioned the leather, dusted every single surface and every single thing on the surface, cleaned the fans, the baseboards, you name it, it got cleaned.  Then we moved onto the kitchen and Chris even took everything out of our pantry and cleaned and re-organized it.  So Saturday was busy busy busy with taking turns playing with Kalia and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  It was past 11 when we deemed the house done enough for the night and headed to bed.  Kalia wakes up at 530 a.m.(oiy!).

Sunday we started on the cleaning kick again (I know, we're totally the life of the party these days), and I think all of the cleaning chemicals and sheer exhaustion must have gotten to my brain by the time Kalia woke up from her first nap.

We took down the balloons we used as decor for Kalia's birthday party the night before (decorations post coming soon, promise) and decided to leave them in Kalia's playroom for a few days because she has a thing for balloons.  Apparently so do we.

When she woke up, we all went in the the playroom to have some family playtime (we try to make sure we both play with her at least once a day on the weekends instead of constantly trading off).  Chris decided a fun game would be to spike the balloons off of Kalia's head.  Kalia could have cared less.  Me, on the other hand, took issue (playfully!) with him spiking balloons off of my little girls head, so I decided I would spike the balloons of off his head for Kalia.

Chris, also, could have cared less.

I guess I thought I'd really show him if I spiked it closer and harder.

A balloon.

Really??

So I tossed my balloon up, and impatiently waited for it to float itself back down so I could spike it as hard as I could into the back of Chris's head.  I swung through the balloon as hard as I could and in my follow through (because now I was entirely too close), I hit my middle finger on the back of Chris's shoulder.

Snap.

Such.an.idiot.

The conversation from there went something like this :

Chris : "Ow Kara, that really hurt my shoulder!"

Me : "FFF!!!!"

Kalia : "Baa!  Baa!! BAAAA!!!!"  (Everything she's happy at is either ba or da)
Chris : "What'd you hit me with??"
Me : (Hunched over holding me hand) "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!!!!!"
Kalia : "BAAAAA!!!!!!"
Chris : "Seriously, what'd you hit me with??"
Me : "My . middle . finger.  I'm.pretty.sure.it's.broken.  Ow, ow, ow."
Chris: "Are you serious??"  takes a look at it.  "Yep, you're serious.  That sucks.  Guess my shoulder doesn't hurt so bad anymore.  How do you do these things Kara???"

Kalia : "BAAAAA!!!!!!  BAAAAA!!!"


Seriously, I am such an idiot.  The sad thing is it is typical me.  I build stuff, move trees, and think I have He-man strength when it comes to most anything, but I can't even spike a freaking balloon without breaking something.

Anyways, the point in writing that is that if I have typos, ignore them (I'm trying to type sans middle finger), and I'm behind on my posts because it takes forever to type them.  Please forgive me for lack of responses on my comments as well, I'm getting there!

Whew...that took forever.  Now, onto less idiotic things...like a chalk wall!

That's right, my walls can talk!  Well, I guess they can't talk per say, but you can read them now!  I've wanted to do a chalk wall somewhere in the house for a long long time.  I told Chris before we were even pregnant that when we had babies, one of the walls was becoming chalk.  He said no, but eventually I broke him down (some tasks take longer to break his disapproval of than others).

The large wall with nothing on it in Kalia's playroom screamed "pick me, pick me!!!" for a chalk wall.  And I listened.

Yeah, those cleaning chemicals are still getting to me...

I'm not gonna lie, painting that huge wall that you see when you first walk into our house black, was daunting.  But, like I said, the wall told me to paint it, so what am I supposed to do?  Ignore crazy talking walls?  No way, not this gal.

I'm losing it, I know.  Must.sleep.

We sanded prior to painting.  If I had to do this over again, I'd sand more thoroughly.  It's hard not to rush through projects with a wee one in tow, but chalkboards are supposed to be like butter, and ours is a little more cottage cheese like.  Still fun, and still totally function able, but for those of you that haven't gotten on the chalk wall train and plan on it, sand, sand, sand!


You can see the original color the previous owners had this room.  Lavendar.  With a pink pool deck.  I have no idea what they were thinking.  Moving on...


I painted three coats of the chalkboard paint on.


The paint looked super streaky, but wound up drying just fine.

After all the coats were dry, I primed / conditioned the wall.  Holy foreverness.  I was kind of dumb (theme of this post I think), and used a tiny thin piece of chalk to do this.  Well, like three of them by the time I was done.  I smartened up for Kalia's birthday party and bought big fat chalk, but I initially only bought the skinny white dustless chalk.  They really should call it less dust chalk instead of dustless.  Chalk is dust.  It doesn't give off as much dust as the big fat ones do, but it still creates dust, so don't let it fool you!


I attempted to erase the entire 16' wall with a tiny tiny felt eraser.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  Again.  Holy foreverness, again.  At that point I was feeling a little silly, and sent Chris this picture:


Minus taking forever, the felt eraser didn't really erase it so well either.


At this point, I think Chris was majorly regretting letting me wear him down over the chalk wall.  But after going back over it with a thin dust towel that is now our official eraser for the wall, we were both really happy with the outcome.


I didn't leave the crooked paint line as our finish for the top of the chalk wall, but I can't show you in this post what I finished it off with.  My finger hurts too badly, and this post is long enough!

The kids had fun drawing on the chalk wall at Kalia's birthday party, and Kalia and I have had fun on it since then.  Or maybe I've had fun and Kalia's had fun eating chalk.  I know, the poor girl doesn't stand a chance. Sigh...

But she'll have fun on it soon enough!  Has anybody tried those chalk ink pens on chalk walls?  I'm really curious to know how those work and if they erase well or leave etchings behind.  Let me know if you've tried it out!

So what do you think?  Well, besides I'm an idiot ... I mean of our new chalk wall, not of me!  (Dear all of my lovely family members, no comments necessary on the idiot front!!)  This was one of those projects that wasn't exactly for her birthday party, but I wanted to have done before the big day arrived.

Hope everyone is having a great week!  Happy Hump Day!

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7 comments:

  1. I'm with Kalia...baaah, baaah, baaah! Just kidding Kara. Sorry you broke your middle finger...at least you didn't break it flicking somebody off :-0 Are your fingers taped together now? Guess I'll see in a few weeks? Love you!

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  2. We have a huge (real) chalkboard that was green and we painted over it in chalkboard paint black but I've never done a wall. Planning on a chalkboard table soon though :) Love the wall. . .I have to say, I really like the "real" chalkboards more but it is what it is, huh? I'll check back on your comments to see what others have to say about the chalk pens. . .I'd be curious too.
    Sorry about the finger. . .the littlest things sometimes hurt the most!
    I can tell you love being a mommy -- best.job.ever, huh?

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  3. The wall looks great! I live in an apartment and have been moving every few years, so I've learned to keep the painting to a minimum, so I found these great dry-erase wall stickers that look like big dots to keep my shopping list and home/pet to-dos. They're great for me because you can re-stick them anytime you want!

    The ones I found were on Clearance at Walmart for $5. I can't find them on their website anymore, but I found them on the Target website! Go check them out! The Pink ones are on Clearance for $17 and the green 'pear' colored ones are only $13:
    Pink: http://www.target.com/p/wall-pops-flirt-dry-erase-memo-decal-pink-13/-/A-11368604
    Green: http://www.target.com/p/wallpops-dry-erase-dots-oh-pear/-/A-13665249

    Kara, if you can even manage it, add a picture of this broken digit - you should wear your idiom with pride! :)

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  4. i think you're lucky chris didn't say it served you right, lol. that'd be my luck, too. i'm loving this wall, it is so fun, and kalia will love it when she can draw!

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  5. Cute, cute! The kids would love it! Would love if you came by my party to link this up!
    Stacey of Embracing Change

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  6. I really, really wish chalkboard paint had been around when my oldest was a two year old. That would have prevented the writing on my dining room wall that never seemed to come off! However, now at 26, she made her own chalkboard wall for her apartment. Seems appropriate.

    Love your site, your dog, and your personality. Thanks for sharing.
    Glenda

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  7. Just wanted to let you know you have a new reader. Because I'm a nerd, I read all your archives (I can't read a blog from the middle, LOL), and I love the things you've been able to do to improve your home. Thanks for showing us all how much can be done, just a little at a time! Thanks, too, for the sweet pictures of you and your husband, your perfect little one, and that silly smiling pup!

    Also, I've added you to my "favorite blogs" page on my own blog, I hope you don't mind.

    ReplyDelete

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