704. Design Weekend 3-- Boys' Room

Hi!  You are in for a treat today.  I am going to show you one of my favorite rooms in our current house:  the bedroom Tall and Short share.  Let's get to the good stuff.  I'm going to start with the "After."  Here is the finished product:


This room just makes me smile.   

When we bought the house, this room looked nothing like it does now.  Here is the "Before" picture below, as you can see, it was a blank slate: 


Yes, it is a picture of a picture.  Queen Virgo ran out of time to find the right disc.   

Let me walk you through what we did.

• Installed beadboard about 42 inches up the wall
• Purposely chose a trim piece (on top of the beadboard) that was wide and flat so the kids could set their robot and cars, etc.
• Also installed new baseboard--thick and chunky
• Painted above the beadboard red.  We picked Heritage Red from Benjamin Moore-- it is featured in their paint fan deck as an exterior color.  On the chip it looks very dark, with a ton of blue undertones and NO orange-- exactly the color we were looking for.  In real life, it makes me think of a child's red wagon, or a firetruck. 
• Painted the beadboard white
• Painted all the trim white
• Painted the ceiling a very pale gray to show off that white crown molding
• Refinished the hardwood floors with a very dark stain (so happy with this--it is dramatic!)
• Went to Next-Day Blinds and ordered the bamboo custom blinds with black-out shades underneath (it is all hooked together as part of the same blind).  Makes the room super-dark for sleeping. 
• The sheets are from Pottery Barn Kids (the duvet cover was made by my mother-in-law by sewing two sheets together).  At the time, (this was almost three years ago) I asked Tall and Short for their decorating input.  One said "cars" and the other said "airplanes."  The pattern on the sheets was a good compromise because it had both.     
• Cannot remember where we got that rug.  Most likely Target, but could have been Ikea. 
• The bed was a cast-off. The Husband painted it a high-gloss white (it was a medium-colored wood before).  We bought a new mattress for it. 
• The chair and quilt are from Pottery Barn Kids (remember, I used to get a 40% discount.  The chair was actually a discontinued floor model, and I got my discount on top of that.  I think they paid me to take it.) 
• The palm tree painting on the left is one of my favorite things.  It is a vintage paint-by-number that I scored on eBay.  The best part is: the artist never finished it, so you can see some of the numbers!   

Quirky, like me

• Tall drew the car pictures above his bed.  Anything that is in a frame and "appears" to be leaning on the ledge is actually nailed to the wall.  Don't worry!  Nothing will fall on him.  
• One thing that is so nice about this room is that it is a corner room and there are two windows.  

Before you think that we make Short sleep in the closet, I will draw a floorplan of the room for you: 

You just can't really see his bed from the angle that I took the photo.  His sheets are the same as the ones Tall has.  His bed is plain because Sammi only had one bed to sell me, not two.  (Why, Sammi, why??  What do you have against pairs?)  

This room was so fun to do!  I knew that I wanted to do something with beadboard and also I am crazy about the color red (in small doses).

One thing I would like to point out is that the room is so tiny that it makes for very little play area.  That is okay, because we made a playroom for them next to my study on the second floor (converted attic space).  The reason we did not give them separate bedrooms is because we did not want one child upstairs and the other child on the main floor (our master bedroom is also on the main floor).  With the house set up this way, the bedroom is mostly for sleeping or reading.  The upstairs playroom (we call it the "Toy Room") is where they have all their Legos, trains, dinosaurs, cars, games, drawing stuff, etc.  They can get that room as messy as they want and I do not have to stress about cleaning it because it is removed from everything else and not very visible (especially if friends or neighbors happen to just drop by). 

Anyway, I love the finished bedroom.  I have been known to go sit in that chair when the boys are at school and snuggle up with a good book.  Don't tell anyone. 

MOV