The Big Cover-Up

We spent the last few days of Josh's time at home painting the upstairs bedrooms.  We are getting a brand new wood floor up there, courtesy of my very generous parents, and we wanted to get the walls painted ahead of time so we wouldn't have to worry about getting paint on the floor. 
When we first moved in I let each of the three older children pick two colors for their bedrooms for the wall and the trim.  Isaak chose blue walls and orange trim, Sebastian chose blue walls and yellow trim, and Alexandra chose pink walls with purple trim.  Overall it was a little gaudy, but I had this idea that they would love and cherish their rooms with the colors they picked and it would make for fun kids rooms.

The plan seems to have been doomed from the beginning.  While I was painting one room, my sweet Alexandra (then three) somehow managed to pry open the can of bright orange paint (which had never been opened before) and poured it all over our living room carpet which had just been professionally cleaned the day before.  Frantically we called George, the carpet cleaner, and begged him to come back.  I wish I'd taken before and after pictures because it really was amazing.  He got it completely out.  Of course, the carpet was subsequently mercilessly destroyed by the very presence of our family.

A few weeks later, Sebastian decided he needed to cover up a spot that I had apparently missed, and got the blue paint out of the garage and did this:

I only took this picture a couple of days ago.  At the time it was a much "cleaner" blue.

Alexandra covered her walls in permanent marker.

Due to all of the brilliant colors of paint and marker we started with 2 coats of grey based primer.  The permanent marker was still quite clear.  Then we did 2 coats of "Butterscotch", which turned out to be much more yellow than we intended, but oh well.  After that I used the paintbrush and specifically went over the marker spots again. 

It's faint but it's still there.  Poor Alexandra.  After every coat of paint, we called her in there and lectured, "Do you see this??  This is after 1/2/3/4/5 coats of paint and we can still see the marker!  You must NEVER do this again.  If you destroy your walls again, you will be in sooooo much trouble!  Major consequences missy!"  She appeared quite remorseful.

So now with freshly painted walls, and a new floor to come perhaps we will turn over a new leaf.  Hopefully the destructobots will see how nice everything looks and decide they just don't want to be the kind of people who destroy everything they breathe on anymore.  Alternatively, I'm contemplating turning the basement into a dormitory and individual children can earn the privilege of having an upstairs room by demonstrating that they know how to inhabit a space without completely destroying it.