Jul. 14: Decorating and un-decorating

Y’know how you start a project by making a list of the things that’ll need to be done? And you write down something like “paint walls” without thinking that about 400 things need to happen before the paint will actually go on those walls? Argh. That’s where we are now in this major upstairs re-do in the house.

Over the weekend we got the carpets cleaned, cleared out the playroom, and picked up every single Lego in Jack’s room. I pulled the pirate wallpaper border off Jack’s wall, necessitating quite a bit of paint touch-up—not surprising, but just one more thing to extend our to-do list. Katie and I tackled her room yesterday, getting most of the closet cleared but (in my opinion) not nearly enough junk thrown away.

We’ve moved Katie’s bed into her new room, and Jack’s mattress in his new room. They were both excited to sleep in their new, though far-from-finished, bedrooms and because it was so late by the time we moved them, they fell right asleep. Today we’ll move a few more large items. Slowly, very slowly, we are making progress.

Can’t remember if I wrote that Jack has decided to move to Katie’s old room. Originally he had no interest, until I told him that if he wanted different colored walls, he’d have to move. The difficulty with this decision is that his loft bed needs to be disassembled to be moved out of his room, and this is something about which we are not thrilled. In an effort to make less work for ourselves, Vic and I tried to convince Jack to take Katie’s room as-is; the lavender walls are because it’s sunset and the flowers are because Indiana Jones is exploring nature. Jack didn’t fall for it. Dang.

It made me a little bit sad to de-girl Katie’s walls, because it was such a fun room for me to decorate. Here’s what it looked like:

If you look closely in the last photo, you can see the “bee lines” I drew. These go (went!) all around the room. While most of the bees, ladybugs and flowers—hundreds of them, which I made using plaster and a candy mold, and then painted—are in the top 12 inches or so of the wall, this particular bunch is at eye level as you walk in the bedroom door. I loved this room.

As I pulled the pirate border off Jack’s wall, I tried to remember if I had taken any pictures of his room after we pirate-d it. I don’t think we did. This distresses me greatly, but not enough to put the border back up. Here are pictures of his room when it was still a nursery, which Katie’s been studying as she makes plans for her own dog/cat-themed room:

  

This was another really fun room to decorate. I started with the bedding—no longer available at Pottery Barn Kids, of course, so I had to rely on eBay because I make everything extra-difficult for myself—and chose a very light version of the green in the quilt for the walls. I painted unfinished wood frames and filled them with pictures of friends’ and family dogs. Using a paint marker, I wrote dog-related sayings around the room, and added bone and pawprint Wallies for fun. I made curtains out of a duvet cover and used grosgrain ribbon in the quilt colors to hang them. When Jack transitioned into a twin bed I was able to find a larger quilt on eBay—lucky me. It made me kinda sad to undo this room too, but Jack was never the dog lover we expected he’d be.

He’s chosen Indiana Jones for his new bedroom, but he changes his interests so frequently that I’m not wanting to put a lot of work or money into this change. I’m painting the walls, and we’ll hang movie posters or framed Indy art, if he wants. But I’m not doing much more. Check out one lucky kid’s Indy room decor:

Please please PLEASE promise me you will not show this video to Jack.

We’re headed to IKEA again today to pick up some things we weren’t sure about when we went last week. Also, meatballs.