Foster Care Visitation Room: Painting

The Foster Care Visitation Room Project is making progress. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about you can find all about the project here. This past Saturday, I spent 10 hours painting the room with the paint donated by Sherwin Williams. The room itself has no natural light and one "mirror" which is actually an observation window.  

If you'll recall, I decided to paint the whole back wall with chalkboard paint. This wall will serve as a kind of activity wall for the children. The chalkboard paint itself is supposed to apply much like a satin finish paint but it's a bit more viscous and I had to take a lot of care to smooth out streaks created by the roller.

The other three walls received two coats of Sherwin Williams Open Air. This color is a bit more complex than an average baby blue. Unfortunately, a room with no natural light won't allow for the subtleties of this color to come through, but I was pleased with the result nonetheless. 

I painted the frame around the observation window white. The boring beige was looking a little dull against the blue. White never fails to freshen things up a bit! 

The corners between the chalkboard wall and the light blue were a huge challenge for me. I was able to tape off the chalkboard wall when painting (if you've ever painted with black, you know there is little to no room for mistakes) and I couldn't apply painters tape to the fresh chalkboard paint. I was bound and determined to get the painting done in one day so I free handed the corner as best I could. To smooth the corner where the two colors met, I wet a rag and very carefully smoothed the edge which helped blend the line. If you're ever doing this at home, simply waiting a couple of days for one of the walls to fully set and then use painters tape to get a clean edge. 

This is me after painting for 10 hours straight with no breaks except to scarf down cold pizza. I started painting about 7am which was the best decision I could have made. This photo doesn't do justice to the spatter of painted covering my hair and face. I even had some paint on my contact lens! 

When I got home on Saturday night sore and exhausted, I took a hot epsom salt bath, drank a glass of whiskey and ate dark chocolate simultaneously. It was heaven! Needless to say, I am still very sore but happy that the biggest step in this project is out of the way. Next step is decor and I can't wait! Hopefully everything will be ready to go into the space next weekend. I'm waiting on the last of the donations to arrive and I am so very ready to see this space come together. A few of the social workers stopped by the room while I was painting to let me know how grateful and excited everyone is about the redesign. I have a long list of people to thank for making this happen, but for now, I'm off to frame prints. xo