As promised, before and after pictures of Kyra's new room:
This is the fourth time in the 5.5 years since we built the house and signed our names on the line that the room has been painted/remodeled. THE FOURTH. The first incarnation was a horrid splatter of a mess, as it was the first paint job that Frank and I had EVER done in our entire lives. About a year later we repainted and went all out with the decor, resulting in this room which we all loved:
A couple of years later TJ came to live with us. Before then, the 4th bedroom was the playroom. We relocated the playroom to the empty and unused formal dining room, moved Jaiden and Jordan into what used to be the playroom, and Teej moved into what was the boys' room. The sports theme went over to Jaiden and Jordan's room. For TJ's room, we kept the paint the same, moved in a bed, dresser, and bookshelf for him, and he chose a superhero theme, primarily Spiderman. I forgot to take pictures of Teej's room before we deconstructed it, but I did snap a couple of pictures before we started painting:
Notice that the sporty border is down from the beige walls. Frank insisted that the border was of the peel-and-stick variety and that is should come down easily. "It should only take a few minutes," he said, before flitting out to school. After I spent three hours spraying water inch by inch and scraping down border (that was definitely not peel-and-stick) foot by foot, I used the soggy, wadded up wet border and threw it at Frank when he got home. "Here," I said. "Take your damned balls and shove 'em down your throat." Do you see that big blue monster of a wall? Three coats of primer. THREE. FARKIN'. COATS, people.
There were many headaches to be had while doing this room (if I never see another wall-mount laser level or roll of painter's tape it'll be too soon), but there was a calming effect that came with the redundancy of painting and repainting. It was beyond worth it when Kyra opened her door:
(In the comments of my last post, Kristin asked me to post a pic of myself in my post-reno ugliness. If you watch carefully in the video above, I all but push Kyra off of me just to get myself off-camera faster.)
Frank and I knew we wanted to go with a pink and brown color scheme, so when we saw this bedding online, we knew it was perfect for Kyra. On Monday, we spent our anniversary evening trolling Savannah for her accessories and choosing paint, and we picked up the bedding from Sears. Later we had dinner at Romano's Macaroni Grill and spent the whole time trying to decide how to paint. Stripes? Accent wall? Border? (Hell to the N-O). Of all the things we could have done, we chose to do that, and it was a groovy good evening. We're simple like that.
Note the shelves. I put them together, because Frank has a knack for putting things together ass backwards. He is kidded for it constantly, because he'll put something together, end up with "spare parts," and the whatever it is will be inoperable, crooked, or just plain wrong. Ha!, I smugly thought, as I was finishing the last step on the first shelf. It would have taken Frank ages to do this, and it would have been done wrong. Just as I hammered in the last nail and reached a whole new level of self-congratulation, I noticed that I had nailed down the backing backwards. The white part should have been facing the front, and instead the ugly brown pressed wood part was. Oops. I couldn't pry the backing off without damaging the shelf, so I improvised by painting the interior back wall of the shelf the same chocolate brown as the walls. It looks like it was intentional, and not a correction of a dumb ass mistake. When Frank got home, he even gave me props for the creative touch. I won't tell if you don't.
Every once in a while, I have a Martha Stewart moment and think of super-cool crafty project to do. When Frank and I bought the bedding, we saw this Bobby Jack pillowcase which says "Anything you can do" on one side and "she can do better" on the other side. We already had a pillowcase, sham, and accent pillow, but I really wanted this pillowcase because it captures Kyra's personality so perfectly. *MARTHA MOMENT* I was struck with the idea of making a couple of pieces of wall art with it. I cut the panels of the pillowcase into separate parts. I trimmed down two pieces of heavyweight foam board, then hot glued sheets of craft foam to them. Finally, I stretched over the pillowcase halves and hot glued the edges around the back. Project total: $20.
The pillow seats are the products of Frank's Martha moment. We couldn't find any inexpensive seating that we liked so Frank created his own. They're as simple as they look: hot pink throw pillows secured to stylish storage crates with brown and white ribbon. He simply looped the brown ribbons through the holes and tied them underneath, then wove the white ribbon through. I dabbed hot glue at the ribbon intersections and around the eges where the ribbon touches the pillow to be sure that everything stays in place when they're sat on.The seat on the right will be finished once we buy more ribbon tonight. Total cost: $30 for both seats (table is $20 and the lamp is $30, both purchased from Wally-World).
No can-do-anything-better-than-you diva's bedroom would be complete without a full-length mirror.
Nothing was better than hearing, "Mommy and Daddy, thank you guys so much for working so hard to make my room extra-special! I just love it, but I love you guys infinity times more than that!"
Then she did what anyone with a brand-spankin' new bedroom would do:
knocked out cold.
What are you Showing and Telling this week?
