A boy and his tiger

There is a a big (metaphorical) clock ticking down in the Sunburnt Tiger household currently - in September we are expecting our first child! It's a magical mix of excitement and panic that's a bit hard to believe or really comprehend. So whilst my wife is doing the most important and creative job I can imagine it's hard not to feel a little left out of the process. If you'll indulge an analogue I'm like the second wheel on the unicycle of gestation - hopefully I make the whole thing a little easier but am not actually required.
When we first started talking about having a family I thought that I'd really like to paint a mural for the nursery. I've always liked painting and writing on walls, I'm not really sure why! I had seen this kids bedroom and the idea was firmly planted - Calvin and Hobbes. I love Calvin and Hobbes. So here then are a few pictures, I hope you like them.

The room was pretty pink and pretty disgusting, full of holes and grime.

Decorating done I scaled up Bill Watterson's painting. Pencil first... then colour...

 

...then black. Hobbes was finished first... followed by Calvin and the tree.

 

The finished thing looks like this, the baby's crib will go in that corner so most of the tree trunk and grass will be unseen.

  

If you want to see more pictures or larger ones you can see them on my Flickr page.

All that remains is for me to put up some curtains and build some more furniture and then I'm about as ready as I can be for my little Sunburnt Tiger Cub!

It's never just painting a room...

I own a house, this is a good thing. The people who owned it before me treated it badly, this is a bad thing.

The décor stands as a good illustration of how two wrongs don't make a right - they had bad taste and were bad at decorating, the results were bad, violently bad. This is a double-edge sword for me - anything I do to the house will be an improvement however seeing the slapdash nature of what they did I see the need/benefit of doing things properly.

I keep making the mistake of thinking I need to paint a room, whilst not technically wrong it obfuscates the bigger picture. Painting a room in fact requires repairing, filling, sanding and cleaning, oh and I suppose painting too. 

A few weeks ago now I started work on our spare room, again it needed lots more than just painting. Extensive preparation has been completed to undo the damage done by the previous "decorators" and I was braced to spend my evenings for the next week painting, my body however had other plans and told me quite simply to stop. I have a problematic spine, 99% of the time it does me proud supporting my over sized noggin and allowing me to do amazing things like walk around. 1% of the time it does pain and suffering. This is never what you'd call good but I have managed to get something positive out of it, so what's been good about a having bad back?

1. It wasn't as bad as it has been, I've been able to move a bit and sit up and the need to not do anything only lasted from Monday evening till Wednesday afternoon. 
2. I couldn't do any decorating and felt no guilt.
3. I spent a day dosed up on painkillers reading comics.
4. I read the first three chapters of a new book by Toby Frost (and saw him to give him my thoughts) 
5. As my strength has returned I've tidied and sorted some stuff that was getting overlooked.
6. I've had some time to reflect on the work I've done on the house so far.

So here's a few pictures of the decorated bits of the house (apologies for the poor photos they weren't taken in sensible lighting - believe it or not the walls are not all just white)

The Master Bedroom with Walk-in Wardrobe (previously an en suite)

The Study/Geekotorium

The Lounge