sew – craftydiy

The boy’s boring bedroom- Before:

And the boy’s brilliant bedroom- After:

Oh my, this was a super fun makeover! Please disregard the blurriness above the bulletin board- I blurred the wooden letters that spell out the boy’s name.

We started with this:

Back story~ Not too long ago, the boy moved to the guest bedroom because it was a bit roomier than his bedroom. Given its new occupant, it was time to change out the floral valance and paint over the yellow, white and cream sponge painting technique on the walls. Okay, maybe it was time to cover the sponge painting anyway, right?

It was time to update the bedroom for my preteen boy! First, the boy chose his colors: key lime green and bright aqua. Key lime? Bright aqua! Seriously?! Yup, and with orange and red accents, please. That’s what he wanted and, after gentle steering toward more sedate colors proved unsuccessful, that’s what he got.

Before he went to camp for a week, he helped pack up his room for the upcoming redo. We decided it would be fun for me to do the make-over “as a surprise.” He had picked the paint colors, but we planned that I would redo his room while he was gone, and then when he returned from camp we would have our own HGTV moment with a reveal!

See the desk? Oh, my. What was I thinking when I originally painted that thing?! But, sweetly, the boy said he liked it Just the way it is (he was definitely trying to save me some work, sweet boy), but it got a well-deserved make-over too.

Aside~ At the same time I was getting ready to do his bedroom, I did his bathroom. See the several swaths of more calming colors I tried to decide to use on the wall in there? Look at two posts previous to this one to see how that make-over turned out.

The preteen helped get everything in his bedroom moved, the heaviest pieces of furniture were placed in the center of the room. See the wooden bird hanging from the ceiling in the top right of the picture below? It became a bird of a different color.

When I started cutting in the new colors they virtually vibrated on the walls. The key lime and turquoise colors made me afraid. Very afraid.

Closet close to finished: the big brown dog approved.

The boy thought a basketball hoop at the end of his bed on his bedroom wall was a great idea. Me? Not so much. But it is his room so…

This old plastic indoor Koosh basketball hoop was a Goodwill find for only $1.50. I primed it, painted the center rim shot area with silver and red paint, and then added colorful paper I already had on hand. I used the same paper to cover the light switch (notice that during the reveal photos, later). After, covering it, out came the Mod Podge to seal everything. I turned the basketball hoop inside out so that the word “Koosh” that was splattered all over it would be less obtrusive, and I also made the bottom opening larger to accommodate a bigger ball, trimming it in coordinating orange bias tape to finish it off.

Ready for a bank shot!

Here’s a shot of that bird of a different color! I love how it turned out. I offers a very fun punch of color! The bird was a wooden puzzle the boy’s grandma gave him to work on one day as they waited for me at a doctor’s appointment. It was lovely natural but I think it is WOW painted orange. 🙂

The abstract artwork on the orange wire shelf, made by the boy in art at school and framed in a $2 frame from Goodwill, is now proudly hung on the turquoise wall.

Allow me to interrupt this boy’s bedroom make-over to bring you a Helpful Hint: Clean up as you go! But if you plan to use the same brushes and roller for the same colors later, or even the next day, and you don’t want to wash and rinse out your brushes, simply wrap them separately in plastic wrap. That little trick works great!

And now on with the room~

There on the bookshelf headboard is the raggedy old stuffed cat my son has slept with since he was a baby. That cat used to be big and fluffy. Now it is sunken and all but bald from being petted and well-loved (I even made it a fur suit to cover its pitiful nakedness.) On either side of it are black woven baskets from the Dollar Store ($2/each), which I wove in some orange bias tape and turquoise cord– they are rather hard to see in the photo, however.

Notice the desk has been painted? And the old Herman Miller orange plastic chair I pulled out of a garbage dumpster years ago- free! To the left of the bulletin board is my son’s name in large black wooden letters, running vertically, which I blurred out. The photo on the right was taken after he got all his stuff “organized” on the desk.

The turquoise color on the side of the desk is the same paint as the turquoise wall color. It is not nearly as bright as it appears to be in the photo.

We already had the Kandinsky print in the lower level but I thought it would bring so many of the bedroom colors together so I hauled it upstairs The print and colorful paper lanterns strung across the valance mirror each other and work well together.

I still need to make the bed skirt, which will be made out of the same material as the valance and have a two-inch border at the bottom of orange fabric (the same fabric with which I covered the spray painted orange lamp).

I seriously worked the full week while he was at camp, getting the bedroom and bathroom finished. On the day he returned, we had the reveal! It was ALL worth it!