Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Will You Be My Roomie?

We have been working on some rearranging of room assignments at our home this summer in anticipation of Sophia's arrival.  The first big change occurred a week ago when Nathaniel moved into Benjamin's room and the two little boys became roommates!  Benjamin moved to the top bunk and Nathaniel now occupies the bottom bunk, so both kiddos have had some adjustments to make.  Dave thought it would take a week to adjust, but Nathaniel is still enjoying his new found freedom of getting out of bed, turning on the light, and climbing up to join Benjamin at least once a night.  Both boys are getting less sleep than they were used to, but maybe that's not a bad thing.  I'm sure eventually they will settle down...just in time for a new schedule when school starts!

Benjamin's room is painted bright yellow with other primary colors as accents, so we decided to repurpose Nathaniel's old changing table/dresser by painting it red and using it as his permanent dresser.  Last week, while Sabastian was camp, Jonathan helped me sand it down, and I painted it.  We started with spray paint, which Dave applied, but that didn't work too well.  But the final effect is pretty cool...almost looks distressed without being distressed...people pay big bucks for that!  You can see the process and final product in the photos below...

This is what the finish looked like before it was sanded

Jonathan hard at work sanding the drawers...he did an awesome job!

The main piece after being sanded...the brown that remains added to the distressed look in the end!

Dave surveying his spray painting...and not liking what he was seeing!

The final product...doesn't it look cool against that yellow wall?

Nathaniel likes it!

The next step in the room switcheroo is to move the remainder of my craft stuff upstairs to our guest bedroom/back room.  It used to be up there originally, then I moved to the basement, and now I'm moving back up...go figure!  Before I move completely I am painting that room, so currently I have four shades of blue on the wall in an attempt to decide what color I want in there.  Hopefully I'll get that painted with the help of a friend, and then I can move the remainder of my stuff up and get settled again.  That will open up the downstairs area outside of the younger kids' rooms as a playroom, which will be nice.  There will be lots of space for a play kitchen area which I can't wait to have for Sophia and her brothers to use!

The final project is Sophia's room.  I'm SO excited to be decorating a little girl's room finally.  Of course, it will be pink, with brown as the accent color.  I already have a lot of decorations picked out or made.  I'm enjoying collecting items from Etsy and other places, and also making and repurposing items.  I am going to paint the crib white and turn it into a toddler bed (hopefully...we can't find the directions!) and paint a current dresser that we have white and give it some new knobs.  I have already spray painted a grapevine wreath white and have pink and brown ribbon to decorate it with, and I have fabric that will be incorporated into a quilt for her bed.  Little sparrow birdies and plum/cherry blossoms are going to be the motif.  It's going to look really cool!  I'll show photos as I go along...I'm very excited, but need to get the other projects done first!

So, there you have it.  The summer is a good time to do all this movin' and groovin' indoors, especially on days like today when it's a bloomin' 100 degrees outside in the shade!  I hope you're keeping cool in your little corner of the world!

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Everything sounds great! The dresser looks so nice. Love bright colors!

Bethany said...

Wow, you guys have been busy!!! I love pink and brown together and can't wait to see Sophia's bedroom! I feel like it's been ages since I talked to you. Hope the rest of your summer is going great and you're staying cool in this heat wave!!!

Amundson Family Musings said...

You can probably just looke up online for the directions to change the crib into a toddler bed. Can´t wait to see the end product!