I spent the weekend working on my middle sons' room. In the last blog post, I showed you a photo of what the room looked like when I updated it several years ago:
This paint color was chosen by my oldest son, who loves the color orange. It went well with the comforters and the overall rustic feel of the room, and it worked well for several years.
My middle son, however, has never had a room all to himself. He has either shared with his older or younger brother. I knew for the year that he will have the room all to himself (he's going into the military also when he graduates next year from high school) I wanted him to have a room that was 100% his and nothing left over from his brother. I also know that I will be taking over this space next year when he leaves, and I wanted something that would transition well, color wise, into my office.
First of all, I have to say, my son is a sweetheart. He told me I didn't have to paint the room at all, he just wanted a bigger bed and a new comforter. And a desk. If I was going to repaint then anything but pink. Pretty low requirements! But two boys are hard on things and I really felt that the whole room needed refreshing. So this weekend I spent time painting.
Can I just say that deep orange is a bear to cover up?
It was still drying in this photo, but that orange wall took 2+ coats to completely cover up. I used the entire gallon of paint for this room. I'm a huge Behr paint fan, in fact it's the only one I use, and I usually only buy the Ultra. In the future, if I need to cover a bold color like this one, I will spend the extra and get the Marquee because I was stressing on the last wall that I wasn't going to have enough paint! The whole wall looked like it had a bad five o'clock shadow after the first coat. I really wanted to get a photo of it, but with the late afternoon sun, it just photographed shadowy.
And here is the semi-finished room!
I moved the entire room around for this re-do since it no longer needed to accommodate two twin sized beds. This dresser is still the perfect size for this room and meets all his needs, but as you can see, it needs to be refinished. There are Star Wars Lego stickers and little doodles done in black sharpie on the side. But this weekend we were just painting and moving furniture into place.
Previously, the boys had taken the small glass and metal desk from their little brother's room, but it never really worked well in their rustic room. And it was really too small to do homework on. I've been drooling over the Printer's Key Hole Desk at Pottery Barn, but seriously, I am never spending $1000 on a desk. I found this one at a local auction site online. Again, this is going to need some updating. I'm not fond of the orange color and since this is a solid maple desk, this is something I can change. I also want to swap out the hardware. So these are minor projects, but they don't keep the desk from being unusable and so we put it up in his room. I need to figure what to do with this wall too. He doesn't like a lot of clutter and wants things kept clean.
Right now the bed is centered under the window and the nightstand is oddly just out of reach. We're building him a new full size bed to replace the twin size bed. It may not appear so in this photo, but this looks a little wonky in person. The bed under the window was not really my preferred placement, but the wall where the desk is doesn't have power outlets (if you have been following me for a while, you may remember that this was an office when we moved in and the wall with the desk had a huge half hexagon cut out that opened to the entryway below). He did have his TV on this wall but there were all these power chords running across the entrance to his closet, which is just to the left of the desk. At least his laptop can be put on a charger on another outlet in the room. But he really wanted his TV viewable from his bed and this is the best option. I think I've settled on curtain from Ikea that are a shade or two deeper than the wall color and I think they'll frame out the bed nicely. He has blinds for privacy, but this is the sunny side of the house in the summer and this room BAKES in the afternoon, so the blackout curtains are more of a need than anything else to cut back on the heat.
I have plans to put up his dartboard, add some artwork I've already purchased, and build some floating shelves still. When you add the bed and the refurbish on the dresser, desk, and nightstand, that's a LOT of projects for this room before it's done. So the goal for the first one is to get the bed built since he outgrew this one a year or two ago. I've already purchased the mattress and we chose a simple bed design, so hopefully, this will be completed in the next two weeks.
More to come!
