Room Rotations

Sept 2018

Bridget and Johanna have a six year gap between them and a personality chasm. It took a lot of patience for them to live in the same space together. Bridget had been vocally wishing for her own room for over a year. She wasn't obnoxious about it but she did ask "When do you think I can get my own room?" on a pretty regular basis. I had set the expectation that it might be another few years. Then Emma got her apartment and clearly offered her room up, making it available for a big shift in rooms.

It took me a few days to sort through the debris left in Emma's room after she moved out. Some of it was just trash but some of it we added to her storage bins. Bridget helped me with the clearing out and with the clean up.  The paint on the walls had taken a beating so Bridget picked out a pale pink, called Innocence. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend we got busy early and the girls and I painted Emma's old room and turned it into a room for Bridget. Before Jim headed off to work, he did a lot of the heavy lifting and moved the furniture. Megan asked to be done with the loft bed, so we took it apart and set it up for Bridget. We painted Emma's bed white and moved it into Megan's room. Without the storage in the loft bed all of Megan's stuff had to find new places and it was a big rearranging endeavor. There was a lot of packing up and purging that needed to take place for all of them.

Next, with so much of the front shared bedroom being moved, I decided to paint that bedroom as well. It had been 10 years since it had been painted and it was ready. Johanna had a hard time picking a color but agreed to a yellow. I made the suggestion of a butter yellow and Johanna's response was "no butter yellow". She repeated this whenever we discussed painting her room. We went to Sherwin Williams together to look at paint samples and she picked out a really nice yellow. I loved it but immediately told the big girls not to read the name. I didn't want to start the decision process over. She had picked "Butter Up". Luckily she didn't go back on her choice. She was ready to get painting.

  The yellow paint went on and the room shifted to Johanna's room. We finished her room up on Labor Day, with everyone's help. Even Emma pitched in when she was visiting for her birthday. We got Johanna's furniture back in place just in time for bedtime. Our shoulders and arms were exhausted after 3 straight days of painting. It looked great and everyone was so tired that falling asleep the night before the school year starts was easier than usual.