FRANKLIN, TN — A Franklin mother who spent last Saturday finally repainting her children’s bedroom after 14 years has confirmed she did not realize the doorframe pencil marks tracking her kids’ heights since 2012 were under the painter’s tape until the tape came off.

Debra Colfax, 47, described the moment she removed the tape as “like watching a little museum burn.” The marks, which began with her eldest son Connor at 36 inches and ascended in irregular intervals through four children and two family dogs, had survived three previous furniture rearrangements, a kitchen renovation, and a minor flood in 2019.

They did not survive Swiss Coffee by Behr.

“I could have taped around them,” Colfax told reporters, staring at the smooth, uniform doorframe. “I had one job. I was the job.”

“Connor was in third grade when we put the first mark up there. That was a real child. That child is now in graduate school. The mark is not.”

Her husband, Greg Colfax, 49, confirmed he had said nothing when he saw the painter’s tape going up because he “assumed she had a plan.” Greg is currently sleeping on the couch not as punishment, he clarified, but because he feels it is appropriate.

The Colfax children, ranging in age from 18 to 26, have been notified. Their youngest, Mia, said only, “I was finally gaining on Connor.”

At press time, Debra had located a photo of the doorframe from a 2021 Christmas card background and was attempting to reconstruct the entire chart from memory using a No. 2 pencil and what she described as “a mother’s instinct and a tape measure.”