For the Love of Vinyl!

I love vinyl lettering! I think I still do anyway. The bug started when I got this made for our kitchen (pictured below). Maybe it's confusing since many people have said upon reading it "You guys didn't move here in 2004?". Oh well. Then I got a couple things for the kids rooms. A couple of girls from church have a business and were having a sale one morning so I came home with a couple things. I talked to my sister on the phone when I got home and told her I found such a cute little saying to put up in Mason's room and read it to her over the phone. Leigh said "How did they spell 'no buddy'?" and so I said "n-o space b-u-d-d-y......why?......OH!!!!!" the play-on-words had JUST occured to me.

Then I got a quote for Elizabeth's room. Let me tell you, applying this quote was the single most frustrating experience of my life.

Firstly, vinyl can be kind of tricky to apply, especially if it comes in as long of a strip as this one did. When I started to remove the paper side (I guess people who've done this before will know what I'm talking about) the word strip got all magled up like a piece of scotch tape does if you aren't careful while tearing off a long piece from the roll. I'm not sure how long I spent trying to fix my mistake - I just know that it took about as long as it did for Mason to finally cry himself to sleep in the next room for his nap. The more I worked, the more it seemed to tangle and stick. I was reaching the point of furious and was completely frustrated that my good money might just as well have been thrown down the drain. As I worked and grew more frustrated, Elizabeth was keeping herself amused behind me by dismantling and reassembling her humidifier, over and over. With the impossible sticky vinyl mess, combined with the clunck clunck clunck of humidifier parts crashing together, I felt a scream about to launch out of my throat. So even though Mason had JUST cried himself into deep sleep and Morgan was also napping in our room down the hall, I let out a huge shriek. Consequently, Mason woke up briefly though Morgan didn't stir....not surprising I guess.

Secondly, after I finally had the thing untangled, I put it on the wrong wall. How could I make such a huge mistake you might ask? Elizabeth has two walls in a light lilac and two walls in a medium lilac. I asked for the word strip in white, thinking it would go well on the darker lilac - though in my slightly-not-thinking-straight head I was also imagining it would go well above her window (which is NOT on the darker lilac), like in Mason's room. When all was said and done and I had applied it above her window and peeled the baking away to look at my finsihed product - I could barely see it on the wall. In my fury to detangle I hadn't thought it through. White vinyl letters on a nearly-white/lilac wall doesn't work! So - I had to get up on a chair, take off each letter individuall and apply it the darker wall. My neck was aching from looking up while I peeled off each letter from above the window and I was starting to sweat and get really hot. Once I had all the letters peeled and applied by hand I stood back to look at my work.

Thirdly, since I am obviously too stuborn and frustrated at this point to go all the way to the basement to get a ruler or a level, the words weren't centered or leveled properly which at this point you'd think wouldn't be a big deal, as long is it was DONE, though I knew if I left it like it was it would annoy me forever. So, I put another half an hour of my time into straightening out the words until they were just right. In the end I ended up making the quote into two lines - and even now it's not quite centered beneath the pictures, but I figure it would easier to move the pictures than to try again.......

So in the end, I am thankful for a little girl who has so much enthusiasm. Even though she watched me work on these letters all afternoon yesterday, when I went in her room this morning to say good morning she was pointing at the letters and saying " OOOOOOHHHHH WOOOOOOOOOOW!".

SO worth it.