Painting Zac's Room

Zac has wanted to paint his room for at least a year. I would go and get color samples and bring them home for him to look over. We had a few things to keep in mind...Zac's striped bedspread, his very unusual blue dresser and of course, the grasscloth wall. We went through the green phase, then moved to red, then to the neutral tans. Zac ultimately decided against these choices.

I told him that we would paint together during Spring Break. So the first day the kids were out, we went to Home Depot and Zac picked four colors: a dark cobalt blue, a deep red, a color called "Red Hot" and one called "Volcanic Burst". I'll pause for a minute to let everyone imagine what the last two colors looked like..............(insert instrumental Barry Manilow song )........................................

Okay, most of you know how I feel about decorating in my house. I am generally not a controlling or anal person, but when it comes to my house, I am very, very particular about what I like and what I don't. It was really hard for me not to rip those blazing orange paint chips out of his hand, lean down and say in a low voice through clenched teeth, "Over my dead body, buster." But I controlled myself. I said nary a word (I think. Or at least I said very little.)

We went home, and I asked him to hold up the chips against the grasscloth and see how each one looked with everything else in his room. He did. Being the intellegent and tasteful person he is, he quickly saw that "Red Hot" and "Volcanic Burst" might not be the best complements to his current decor. I praised him for his precocious design sense, no doubt inherited from me.

He decided on the deep blue finally, but I asked him to lighten the shade just a bit so that it wouldn't look like a cave in his room. He finally settled on the color "Seven Seas", which is a rich, almost federal, blue.

We got everything taped and covered, and got to painting last Thursday. Zac and I enjoyed painting graffiti on the wall, yakking and transforming his room into a great boy's pad. This is how I connect with him now that he will barely hug me. He got a bit bored with it after a while, but I asked him to finish the large sections of the room, and he did. I trimmed and we both finished out the second coat.

It looks great. We rearranged the room and now he feels like he has a whole new bedroom! All in all, it made for a great way to spend a day with my kiddo over Spring Break.