8 teens + paint = bad idea

Since yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I had the day off work [yippee!] and I spent it hanging with the youth group and starting to tackle the re-decoration of the youth room.

We used to call the room: Cosmic Chaos or Neon Throw-up, but we set out to change that!

Here's what the room looked like, before:

[and pardon the photo quality, these were taken with my iPod Touch, I forgot my big camera at home - boo]

After much heaving and shoving and puffing we got all of the game equipment out of the room and set to work sanding the walls.

The girls found the dust from the different colors quite hilarious and decided to wear it like war paint - it was getting everywhere anyway, so why not? :D

Adam, the lone gentleman of the group:

I really have to hand it to Chrysta & Cassie though, these girls volunteered to go into the unfinished "kitchen" area of the youth room and sand the walls down so we could put the final coat of plaster on the walls and get that room painted too. They had to put up plastic there was so much dust flying - and they both came out of the room with grey hair and white faces - they rocked !!

A few of the crazies :P

Painting !!

So, we got a ton of work done - and the only disappointment was the bottom half of the walls:

The paint was scratching off as it was, so we knew we needed to rough it up a bit so the primer would stick - we did that - check. But as we began to paint the primer on, we realized that the blue paint was peeling off under the primer - making a huge mess.

We decided that whoever painted originally, painted that bottom part of the wall with a super high glossy paint, and then whoever painted the blue color over, failed to prime or do anything to the walls. So, now we're in a tough spot, because now we have to strip all that paint off, before we can go back to priming. Oh well, what are ya going to do?

But, here's what we finished with:

Looks way different doesn't it? It's going to look fabulous when we're all finished - the idea is to do it all up with a coffee shop theme. The colors are reds & tans, and we're leaving all the game equipment out of the room [the youth group hardly play with the stuff anyway] Half of the room will be set up for our Bible Studies, and the other half will be set up with small round tables and stools, and once we get our kitchen area all set up, we'll be able to host game nights and other events for the youth !! So, we're super excited that the first step has been taken, and we'll be continuing to work in the coming weeks to get the room finished !!