Oh My Ki-Yo-Mi

Mikael ni selalu suka bagi surprise yang realllyyyy a SURPRISE. Hari ni balik sekolah, dengan excitednya nak cerita dia belajar lagu baru.. Ingatkan lagu baru keinsafan ke kan.. Rupa-rupanya demam KPOP dia ni. 

Dasyat sungguh fenomena Kiyomi ni.. I just knew about it, but he already memorize the moves.. siap kiss2 jari bagai.. 

Paint It Yourself - Little Boss's Room

This year, Mikael will be FOUR!.. OMG 4, how time flies.. I still can remember his little feet when he was 1 day old. Uhukss.. Nway, although he's considered to be a big-little boy, he doesn't really act like one. Mikael still clinging on me at night, and just couple of days recently he did not wake up in the middle of the night for milk.. Fuhhh, at least mama gets to sleep longer now. Longer, but yet not not that comfortably. I guess most mommies may experience this 180 degrees bed-sharing thingy. I end up having a backache in the morning. 

If your're wondering how Mikael's sleep, this is just similiar to what it is..

                                 Either him sleeping 180 degrees, or.. 

Mama and Ayah take the turns.

To overcome this, we decided to let him starts sleep on his own bed. Knowing Mikael, he won't easily buy-off all the sweet words that we continue to bolt him :P. So we're gonna go for a win-win situation. Let him have a room with all the fun and joy in it and mama and ayah can finally 'own' back our bed. This is when the Paint It Yourself project started..

 I never painted a room before, but I always believe the magic of colors can transformed your mood and give that homey feeling. Initially, I google out all the kid's room design which brought me to this great website, Houzz for home design ideas and DIY stuff. Since this is our first painting experience, we do not want a too complicated patterns beyond our painting ability. Hence, I choose to make the colorful squares patterns with the white trim. Being naif in this art, I believed painting a squares are much easier than painting the whole wall at a time. Coz if you need to seal a defect or make an even color u can just paint the box instead of the whole wall. :D

Here, I'm sharing with you guys the steps for the squares pattern. Some of the points are quoted from my hubby's as he was the painter.. I am more on the pre-work job. Hehehe.

1.  Capture the idea of what you want the room to feel like. In my case, I wanted a colorful and joyous room for my boy.

2.  Get all the gears ready. You'll need a pencil, masking tape (a lot of it), scraper, brushes (3 inch and 2 inch), small brush for touch up, water weighing tool (hardware shops called it 'timbang air'. I used to ask the tauke, 'ada ruler air tak?' and he went like 'lu nak ukur macam mana ruler air'.. heh.. 

3.   This crucial step is choosing the colors combination. Hubby let me own this part :D. Based on my minimal artistic talent, I just had in mind on pastel colors with a little enhancer. If possible, avoid using dull colors for your children's room.  Bright colors naturally attract children attention thus help to simulates their learning process. If you have it dull, balance it up with colorful wardrobe, storage boxes, bedspread, etc. For me, I chose 3 different colors from Nippon Paint - Spotless . The colors are Aquatint (420), Warley Rose (874) and French Linen (500). The French Linen yellow color is the key color to enlighten the room and balanced up the pastel colors. Although in the beginning we thought the yellow was too bright, the end result was still satisfying. It's normal to get a paint colors that divert a little bit from the catalog :). 

4.  Once everything prepared, you're ready for the pre-work. First is to create the design that you intended to have with masking tape. I choose squares, it's easy peasy - everything goes straight.. heheh.. The squares I made is 20" x 20". The size depends on you, i just can share that small squares will give a small impact on the room space. A square too big might give unbalance to the space. So, you can just try and error for the right size :P. Tape the lines with the masking tape; u can make a straight lines using the water weighing tool. Those lines will be your trim lines later. And try not to use the white masking tape that we're using. For painting patterns, the blue masking tape is the right one. I thought the blue one is the 'oversea' type of masking tape, coz every time i ask for masking tape, they gave me the white one. Now you know, so ask wisely in future. Up to this, my job is settled. 

5.   The painting part was done 99% by hubby, I only help a little on the second layer painting. So some of the explanation/tips were quoted from him. Start painting. Tip 1 : Do 1 color at a time at random squares. It is good to plan ahead on which color for each squares.   

6.    50% progress took about 3-4 hours to finish 14' x 10' wall. I am an amateur painter, so i think pro painter should be able to finish it faster. :) Tip 2: Do double layer of paint for even finishing. Do wait for the paint to dry properly (~2 hours depending on type of paint you choose).

7.   After letting the paints dried, start to remove the masking tape carefully. 

The 'land-lord' also wants to contribute his effort obviously. :D

8.   Final product :) total time spend ~1.5 dyas. I think if you fully concentrate on it, you should be able to finish it all in 1 day. Pretty happy with te end results. Tip 3: I think using 4 or more colors will be better as the color sequence can be more random.  

So, the project was paused for a while, until we get the right color for the other walls to blend with this nice artwork. Heeeee...

Till then, as salam and goodbye.