Until I met Brett, Hailey and Hannah, I hadn’t spent much time around twins. In fact, I hadn’t spent any time around identical twins. My grandfather was an identical twin, but I only met his brother once or twice my life when I was very young. I had no idea about the dynamics between two people who not only shared a womb for nine months, but also the same skin, eyes, hair, lips…well, everything.
Though that’s not really entirely true. It’s pretty easy once you get to know them to identify who is who. However, not being a twin myself and being an only child for years, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around always being with someone. In fact, when I was pregnant with both Maeve and Ainsley, I was a bit freaked out by the notion that I was never truly alone. (And I really like my alone time.) Hailey told me yesterday that she and Hannah have never been apart for more than eight hours. Wow.
That being said, I also see a determined desire to differentiate from each other, to form distinct and individual identities. We have been trying to think about how to do that in the house, given that they share a room. The go-to approach is to be all matchy-matchy or risk having a room of clashing chaos.
And in fairness, their room has been a LONG time process. Of all the wallpaper experiences we have had in this house, it was by far the most challenging. We began with this post in January, gave up in frustration and pretty much didn’t touch it again until June. The wallpaper itself came off quite easily. The glue was a different story entirely. Poor girls. Their room looked like this for a long long time.
Lovely lassies didn’t really complain at all. But before they got here for the summer, Brett really wanted to make sure their room was finished. He went at it again with the TSP and finished that wall above near the door, which he said was pretty much the most hellish job ever. The glue comes off in these web-like sheets. Gross. Then (despite my protestations) he thought about trying to paint a patch over the glue to see what happened. And as predicted, the paint began cracking within a week. Good thing it was only a patch.
Then he tried sanding it, in the hope that he could just sand it right off. Alas, this was just as horrid of an endeavor as the TSP. However, the magic combination was sanding a bit followed by the TSP. Now this was by no means easy, just slightly less painful.
Then the question arose of what color to paint the room. And like all children who want to make their individual mark, they couldn’t agree. One wanted orange. One wanted green. Okay, that’s good. Those colors work together and work with their duvet covers. At first we thought of painting one wall each color, but we couldn’t decide which walls because the allocation of color must be fair and balanced of course. And because great minds think alike, Maeve and I came to the same conclusion at almost the same time: cut the room in half with color.
While I loved the idea in theory, I have to admit I had my reservations about the outcome. Such a doubting Thomas. The result was better than I could have imagined. The side benefit being the sense of actually having TWO rooms in one. We juxtaposed the orange side with green accents and the green side with orange accents. We had these two prints of Buddha that used to hang in our old kitchen, which the girls loved so we repurposed them in their room. We bought the lamps at Tar-jay. With shades, they were $19.99 each. Though we couldn’t find a lamp in orange to match the one in green, so we went with silver instead, which I think works well. Shag rug also courtesy of Tar-jay, $29.99.
The girls love the result and so do I. And I love that every time I walk by their room now, I smile instead of cringe.
Have any of you had to solve for shared rooms? How did you do it?
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Tags: mid-century modern kids, twins, wallpaper removal
