The Busy Mom's Way to Paint a Room

Ugh. Painting a room. So daunting, isn't it? The prep work alone makes me cringe. And of course, the time it takes - to tackle just one room would cause me to have to call a sitter for an entire day.

Which is why I've created another plan since becoming a busy mom. In my single days, sure, I could afford to spend a weekend painting. No problem. But when a family's involved, particularly one with small children, and  you happen to be redecorating one of the most popular hangouts in your home, you gotta break it down. You may remember how I gave our kitchen a makeover - I broke it down into little steps. That's how I've approached the family room as well. This may not appeal to you - some like to be organized, do all the necessary prep work in an orderly fashion, decide on a weekend to tackle it, and be done. And of course, that's a great method too...if you have patience, which I, do not. Well, at least when it comes to decorating. So here's the scoop:

Step 1: Priming. I HATE this step. It's so...ugh, I don't know, BORING. Painting's not so bad, because you at least get to see the anticipated color up on the walls, but primer? You know what it'll look like and it's just a big ol' pain to me. So I decided to just bite the bullet last week, grabbed my roller and primer, shoved all the furniture to one side of the room, primed, shoved all the furniture to the OTHER side, primed.

Stick the furniture back in its place, and go on with life till the motivation hits you to paint the walls with color.
(Usually for me, it's the next day or so;) Sorry I don't have a lot of pictures of this step - hadn't planned on writing a post about it!

Business as usual, as you can see from the dumped legos in the corner;)
*I should note that before I prime, I spackle - I had a LOT of holes to fill, so I spackled one day, sanded it down the next, and took a rag to quickly wipe the walls to make sure the dust was gone.

Step 2: Start painting. Again, it's such a production to paint a room. So on Saturday morning, the last thing I wanted to do to my husband and kids was tell them Mommy would be spending the entire day painting. But I was DY-ING to get that Sea Salt on there and see how it would look. So I took about an hour, hour and a half maybe, and completed one side of the room. I shoved all the furniture to one side, and started painting. This took a little longer than the priming step, because I had to do two coats, and cut-ins. BUT...I saved myself a lot of time by not using painter's tape! I know, couldn't believe it either. But if you have a nice angled brush (I have one by Purdy), and take your time, you can really paint around the trim without taping first. You might slip and need to wipe it off right away, and there *may* have been a couple curse words uttered when that happened, but it wipes right off the molding. I've been painting a lot of rooms lately without tape - kitchen, dining room, master bathroom - and it's a timesaver, let me tell you. I didn't even take the outlet plates off either - painted carefully around them, and they look FINE. Slacker, maybe, but I promise you, no one's going to lay down on the floor and examine my outlets. And even if they did, they'd never notice I didn't remove the plates when I painted;) Also, you'll notice I didn't go all the way up to the ceiling, that's because we're adding crown molding. {Happy Dancing right now}

So once I did two coats, it looked great and I called it a day. Wasn't even 10:30 by this point, so I had the whole day ahead of me to hang and play with the family. Cleaned off my supplies, pushed the furniture back in place, and life was back to normal.

You can see where I stopped there on the tv wall!

Step 3: Paint other half of room. So a few days went by, life was busy as usual and I didn't have a couple hours to spare painting. Then yesterday I found some time and you can probably guess how the story goes....shoved everything to the other side, grabbed my old sheet to cover the  floor, and started painting...

These were taken after I had finished - I had rolled the rug up too, and covered the tv, but you get the idea.

Just had to slide everything back, and we are DONE!

This may not be the simplest, most efficient way to paint a room. But it works for this busy mom, and I kinda like it better. Not so big of a task when you tell yourself, 'oh, I'll just give it an hour today.' Plus, the room stays liveable, with the exception of that hour or two when you're in the midst of it all. THAT really appeals to me.

Oh, and can we talk about that color for a minute??? I'm seriously in love with it. Like OBSESSED. It's Sherwin Williams Sea Salt, 75% of the formula. And these pics do NOT do it justice - this color is gorgeous! Some of my Facebook followers have asked what that means, and it just means that it's not the full 100% formula when they mix it up for you - they only add 75% of the color, so it's a tad bit lighter than the original Sea Salt. I like to ask for 75% because I always think colors appear just a little darker than I had imagined when I see them on the wall. This way, I have a little extra lightness. I've asked for 50% in the past, even 25%. They'll know what you mean, I promise;) I've never been questioned at any paint place - Home Depot, Lowes, SW, etc.

So I hope this helps other busy people out there, who never can find the time to devote to painting. If you break it down, you just might get it done after all! I don't know about you, but I sure would like to spend my Saturdays doing other things than priming and painting! ;)