The last two weeks Drew, with a little help from Daddy, has been working on painting his room, getting it ready for him to move out of his crib and into his new room with a big-boy's bed. Like most projects, it didn't wind up to be as easy as first imagined. Click "continue reading" to see various stages and the final result.

After repairing some nail holes and other blemishes, we brushed in the edges around the top half of the room and then rolled on one coat of paint on the ceiling and two coats on the upper walls...easy enough.

Painting the bottom blue brought the first sign of trouble. It required five coats of paint before it finally covered without roller marks. Little did I know that paint is a product of bizzaro-world where light paints cover easily while dark paints which are full of pigment but little "base" don't cover well. This is why there is a thing called "base/primer coat"...who knew?

After contemplating taping with the assistance of a laser and/or a level, I went with a simple verticle stick measuring from the carpet up and made marks the same height all along the walls where each tape line would go...this was one of the smarter things I did. Next, the tape was placed over the painted portions to block in the final red stripe. (If Drew had had his way, the entire room would have been his favorite color, red...so we settled on a red stripe instead.)

Next, skipping what I actually did, the thing to do would be to paint over the soon-to-be red side of the tape with the color that the tape is covering so that any bleed-though would be the same color of paint. In other words, paint the bottom edge of the top tape line with light blue and the top edge of the bottom tape line with dark blue.

The red stripe took seven coats before it fully covered everything underneath. With so many coats of paint covering the tape, simply pulling it up creates a very jagged line due to the thick latex (rubber) paint ripping unevenly. However, a little precision work with a straight edge and a box-cutter created a surprisingly sharp crisp edge. The final result, not a bad looking boy's room.

For what it's worth, the paint was Behr Premium Plus interior satin enamel acrylic latex, color Saltwater, California Poppy and Deep Royal (top to bottom).