I said a

room switcharooo... (I said a room switcharoo)
I said a room switcharoo... (I said a room switcharoo)
I said a rooma switcha painta switcha movea switcharoo! (I said a rooma switcha painta switcha movea switcharoo!)
Uh huh...oh yeah...one more time...(you pick the style)

Anyone remember the "boom chicka boom" cheer? That's what started going through my head when I contemplated writing up my room switcharoo post (or is it switcheroo?). I'm already starting to go a little nuts with Jim gone. Uh huh...oh yeah....

We decided a while back to switch Samuel's and the little girls' rooms around and thought that the time between school letting out and the Frosts arriving would be the best time to tackle it. We did have those delightful day(s) playing at Big Beaver Lake first, which pushed our time line back a little bit.

Tuesday night (the 26th) we got Samuel's mural taken down. I hated to see it go because it was a cool 'artistic' world map and reflected Samuel's interests when we moved into the house back in Jan. of 2003. Samuel asked if we could just paint around it, but I thought the babes deserved a fresh start and it wouldn't really 'match' the yellow paint I had chosen. So down it came. Slowly. Stickily. Reluctantly. Vengefully. (I say that last adverb because in a few spots it took extra paint with it, requiring spackle repair.)

Wednesday we finished packing up Samuel's room and had almost all of his non-furniture possessions downstairs on the futon. We also got primer put onto the walls, with Jim helping for a bit before heading to town and a friend helping at the very end as I tried to cover the walls as completely as possible. The little girls' room was also mostly packed by this point too.

Thursday was the day Samuel's loft bed came down. It just had to, after contorting my body to paint the day before. It was much nicer standing on the platforms flat on the floor rather than crouching upon the top of the loft. (The two front bedrooms have quite the sloped ceilings because of our roof's pitch, making painting around furniture even less fun than it might normally be.) We got the yellow paint on the walls and were thrilled when it covered well and didn't require much touch up. We got the cribs taken down before wrestling Samuel's bed downstairs.

We finished switching furniture: one dresser down, one dresser up, toy 'shelving' up, much of the rest of the stuff from Samuel's closet down, crib mattresses up (no toddler beds assembled yet). Our family room area was the Furniture Way Station for a little while, with Samuel's mattress perched on top of his dresser drawers and other items scattered about. The little girls were put to bed in a room that still smelled of paint and had possibly wet paint somewhere on the walls. Samuel had help hauling all of his boxes upstairs and stacking them on top of the loft bed he and Jim reassembled. He was a little appalled to see how much smaller his new room was. I was too. We all thought he'd have a bit more room on the floor. oops.

Then...I went and picked up our company from the airport! Julie and the boys got in late that night and did have places to sleep, thankfully. I will be eternally grateful for Julie's, and (a little later) Chuck's, graciousness about our messy house and the not-quite-finished room switcharoo (Do you have that rhyme going through your head again? I do.).

In fact we're still finishing the final details of the room changeover (used a synonym to give you a reprieve from the rhyme)...I just cleared the very last things from Samuel's closet and made room for lots of the little girls' things. Now I have to figure out the best way to keep them from opening the closet and pulling things down!

As we worked feverishly to get everything in its place, Jim asked me why we had chosen to do this 'project' right before our company came. Fair question, as we also tried to finish cleaning certain areas of the house. Those days were about the only days we could do this. The Frosts were here until the 13th, Jim was leaving the night of the 15th for two weeks, he was returning with his parents, my parents were coming right after his parents left, then I'd be starting school the week after our last guests left. We didn't have the luxury of putting it off. Plain and simple.

I'm glad it's basically done. Now if I could only get the little girls to be complete angels in their new room with their new-found freedom....