Week 2 of the ORC is here and, amazingly, I’m right on schedule (all the thanks to the two chicklets who have been taking awesome naps)! My goal was to get the kids room painted before the week was over and bada bing, bada
BOOM! Here’s what their room looks like right now!
Yep, week 2 also saw me, not only painting their room but “bedazzling” their wall with diamonds.
I CANNOT WAIT to show you how those diamonds came to be and I will in my next post (pssst…it’s CHEAP & EASY!), but before I could even get to that fun part, I had to cover up the tan walls. If you’ve ever painted a kids room before while it was being inhabited by said kids, you know, it’s muy inconvenient. To get to the walls you have to completely upheave their room – move beds, dressers, whatever else they use on the daily. For us, that meant moving the furniture from one side of the room to the middle one day and the other side the next day. It also meant moving the kids into the play room and our room to sleep for a few nights. (This is why, if I get the chance to paint before we move into our next house, whenever that is, I WILL.)
The walls went bright white (Pure White by Sherwin Williams) and to help me get them there was Handy Paint Products. Before I go into all the details, I know I’ve said I don’t do product reviews/sponsored posts anymore for several reasons I won’t get into and even though this really isn’t either of those, Handy did reach out to me to ask if I’d want to use some of their paint products for my challenge and because we’ve already bought one of their products before and LOVE it, I said “of course!” Foot, meet mouth. Seriously though, I’ve talked about their ingenius Paint Cup in previous posts and it is something I use every single time I paint a room/dresser/you name it. Thankfully, they sent me a new one because mine…well, it’s been through umpteen gallons and while I spend lots of time cleaning my brushes, I apparently don’t with my paint holders.
I use the Paint Cup to edge when I paint rooms. Several years ago I used a miniature roller tray and I don’t know why because it was the most awkward thing to hold in one hand while I brushed with the other. It’s a wonder I never spilled paint. When I ran across the Paint Cup at a Lowe’s once upon a time, I grabbed it and the rest is history. The handle on it makes holding it easy peasy but my favorite part is the magnet that holds your paint brush for you when you need to climb up/down the step ladder or answer a toddler’s burning question.
They also sent me their super cool Paint Tray. I was the most excited to use this thing. For the past year, I’ve been using a cheap paint tray I bought at ReStore after the metal one we had been using for years and years started to rust and had to be tossed.
Old vs. New
Second, it holds an entire gallon of paint. I hate when you’re in the middle of painting a room and you run out of paint so you’ve got to find a place to set the roller while you pull out the can again, pour in more paint, at which point I also have to rinse off the awesome spout I use quick, and then I can get back to painting. What a waste of precious time when nap time is the only time you have to paint during a day, right? Handy thought of that and has given me back my time.
Third, and this depends on what type of roller handle you use but both of mine are like this, there’s a lip you can fit the edge of the roller handle on so that your roller doesn’t slide down into the paint when you have to set it in the tray for a second.
Last, they’ve added their signature magnet to the tray so that you can use both roller and paint brush if you like. I usually do one or the other but when I painted the kids room, I had paint leftover in the tray from painting one half of the room so I bagged the roller for the next day and got out my paint brush to start edging until the kids woke up. I didn’t have to pour the paint into my Paint Cup to do that, which would’ve created an extra step. I just grabbed my brush, edged, and stuck it to the magnet when I had to move along.
Had my blog husband been home while I was painting, I’d have had him get an action shot but the best I’ve got for ya is this:
Taken by me right before I started painting the first half of the room. I guarantee you, we’ll have this paint tray for years. And chances are, because they make plastic liners to go inside, it probably won’t get as decorated with dry paint as my cup is.
(P.S. If you’re looking for a good ice bath, the Handy Paint Tray is good for that too! Anthony (possibly) fractured his foot last weekend and he found that filling the tray with ice and sinking his foot in worked perfectly to soothe and prevent swelling. I wouldn’t recommend hurting your foot but in case you do, at least you know what works.)
I took a few in-progress pictures with my phone but they’re not much to look at in the way of aethetics because of the furniture everywhere but just try to focus on how much better and even brighter this room is in white.
Before:
Halfway done:
All done!
I had my heart set on white bunk beds before we found these wood ones but I am loving how the dark wood really stands out with the white walls. I can’t wait to inject more color into this space!
Now everything is back in its rightful place and it’s onto the next item on the to-do list! I’ll fill you in on that next week but stay tuned for all the details and tutorial on those diamonds coming your way first! If you haven’t gotten your fill of progress shots, you'd probably love to check out all of the other rooms getting redone on the One Room Challenge website. It’s always fun to me to see plans swirling and starting to become reality. It’s like I’ve got lots of backstage passes!
Thank you Handy for making my job easier! A couple more things I really appreciate about them – 1) their paint products are made in the USA, 2) their liners are made from 100% recycled material, 3) I’ve seen most of their products at Lowe’s and Home Depot so they are easy to find AND they don’t cost an arm and a leg, 4) they didn’t ask me to say any of this. I just really applaud them for making great products!
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