Paint Project - Part 1

Today I  declared the boy's rooms finished.  F.i.n.a.l.l.y. after 6 weeks of mess and stress which included 10 cans of paint, way too many trips to Home Depot, brushes, rollers, sheets of plastic, rolls of tape and a couple more brushes, 2 major paint spills (did I mention that we weren't replacing the carpet?) a couple of living room sleepovers, plenty of sweat and sore shoulder muscles, and a bit of nagging sweetly reminding my husband that I needed his help for a few things and one grand trip to Hobby Lobby! (my first)

Of course we have to start with the before(s).......

This is Tyler's room. It was probably the nicest  bedroom when we moved in. Actually I probably wouldn't have bothered to paint it except for one thing. You see those stripes on the orange wall? They look nice from a distance but apparently they used cheap tape to do those. Ugh!

Wow, when I look at these now the walls all look a little naked. I didn't even attempt to do any decorating because I was hoping this whole project would be done a long time ago.

He wanted his room to be orange. He's all about the Flyers right now and everything in his world should be black, orange and white. I told him he could have orange but I would not buy orange paint. I figured it's a lot easier to change curtains and sheets when he gets tired of it (or changes teams!) than to repaint. That's not happening till he moves to college! So, (drum roll, please!) This is what we came up with.

We're both happy. I caved on my "no orange paint" promise when I remembered the lamp stuffed up in the attic. Yup, the orange one in the corner there, thanks to my trusty friend the spray bomb for making me "the best mom ever" for at least a few minutes. For a few bucks I think it adds a fun look to the room. Still not much decorating going on on these walls. I'm having a little trouble finding cool boy stuff. All my "look isn't this a pretty flowered picture?" suggestions, whether orange or not, have been turned down. There are a couple of Flyers posters ordered and beyond that we'll just keep looking and working on it I guess. We also on the lookout for an orange chair of some kind for the corner. Anyone have any more great ideas??

I found this fabric online and made these curtains in about 20 minutes. Fold and hem, that's it! The gray in the back  is actually single energy efficient curtain panels. They make it much darker than regular blinds and they seem to help a lot when the sun is beating in there in the mornings. Hopefully they'll work just as well when the winter winds start blowing!


And the little boy's room, these 2 rooms used to be one big room. Someone installed a flimsy, kind of make shift, wall in the middle to make it 2. It works okay but you have to go through the one to get to the other. That means that we really have no choice but to put 3 little boys in the smallest of all the bedrooms. I'm not sure how that is going to work in 10 years but I guess we'll fix it then. Anyway, I was trying to decide how to paint them so they sort of coordinate. I ended up painting the walls the same color in both of them and then using different accent colors. If I were doing it over I would go a shade lighter on the gray but it didn't bother me enough to waste a gallon of paint or run back to the store and try to change it. It makes the rooms a tad bit dark but most of the time when they're in there they are sleeping anyway so it's all good.

So, before....

Hand painted clouds anyone? Don't be jealous! :)

And After.....

I had a little too much fun decorating this one! I've been scheming the truck/mechanic/road theme for a long time. I picked up the wooden license plate boxes a couple of years ago. They are finally in their happy place.

Yard-Sale-Free-Pile-Shelf plus (you guessed it!) a couple cans of spray paint = 1. a perfect splash of yellow fun and 2. a place for little boys to keep their many Lego creations. Score!

Old frames laying around the house plus a few pages from a free calender. Easy, Peasy!

Super fun and cheery, chevron curtains. Those took a whole hour since I decided to get all fancy and add the ribbon on the bottom. And, my perfect Hobby Lobby find, an old metal truck and road sign.

It's just so perfect! I nearly danced out of the store. And did I mention it was half price?

And someone thinks he's pretty big stuff, moving into a big boy bed. I thought I had 4 little boys, he tells me I have none!