Project: Finished!

We've put the finishing touches on FTD's 'new' room! Hooray! And it looks just grand. Pictures and posters are back up, curtains back up, new lights, the whole works. Man oh man does it feel good to have this one under our belts. DD's room doesn't need much, so unless I get a wild hair next fall, we're done painting for a good long while. (The wild hair might be a new coat of paint in the dining room with it's 17' tall walls. . . . Scary scaffolding would be involved. . . . any takers?)

Here 'tis:

One Room~~Coming Along Nicely, Thank You

When we built our "new" house 15 years ago, I wasn't sure what colors to paint the rooms. So I didn't. The light plays very, very differently from room to room and season to season. For example, in the summer the living room seems green, even though it's very white.

So when the time came to do something with FTD's room, paint was necessary. Necessary because when we moved in I faux-painted the wainscoting area. It was supposed to look like logs, but because I forgot to shade the 'logs' to look rounded, it ended up looking like a stable, but there it was. This photo shows his room before, minus the wildlife and park posters that covered the wall.

It started with one of those chains of events: DD jumped into his bed one evening and crash! it's busted and busted good. The way things work around here usually, DD gets all the cool, new stuff. He's always been my 'material girl.' It looked like he'd need a new bed. But many years ago after visiting a friend's cabin in the UP, FTD said he would like to have a log bed like theirs someday. I said great. It's been 6 years and now this happens. DD gets the new stuff again. . .or does he? My brilliant niece, Sally Seam-Ripper, #5/8 (see my Derby posts!) said why don't we give DD FTD's bed and get FTD a new one. Doh. So I painted FTD's bed shiny black at DD's request--"It's Norfolk Southern colors, you know" and ordered FTD a new bed.

If only life were that simple. First I had to worry about the size of the bed. Since the boys are young men now, they really have outgrown twin size beds (DH says, "Well, I slept in a twin bed until I was 28. Hrumph." Yeah, dude, and you only weighed 120 lbs sopping wet.) But the boys' mattresses are about 10 years old and still in great shape, so Scotswoman that I am, I couldn't bring myself to cough up the dough for a full size mattress. He'll need it soon. . . but for a while at least, FTD will be sleeping on a twin mattress in a full frame.

But wait! The new log bed is finished so beautifully (Moon Valley in Clarkston MI) the faux painted stable walls had to go. And this is the room of a young adult, not a little kid after all.

It was time: Put colored paint on the walls! Yikes, what a jump for me! I really do love the serene white of the house, but it's time to go out on a limb. And of course, if we got new paint, well, he needs new carpeting, too. The stuff that was in there was a great industrial grade, very flat carpet that was great for little kids who had all manner of accidents. . . yeah. And it held up beautifully. But again, it's time for grown up stuff. We took the old carpet and put it up in his loft and it looks great up there. The rest will go to DH's workshop in the basement.


My color sense isn't very good--picking material for quilts makes me crazy for example. I know when I love something, but I can't tell if it's blue-green or grey-green the way BeeHive Betty can. So I asked another wonderful friend to help me pick out carpet and paint. We spent several hours at The Anderson's General Store and came home with paint. Our wonderful store associate told us that carpet would be on sale in two weeks--20% off instead of the 10% Geezer Discount I was planning on.

My new nephew said he could help with the painting, but only if we did it a couple of weeks ago. Since he's 6'5" tall, that's a great offer. We moved all of FTD's junk to various other places all over the house--the hall, the dining room, and his mattress went into the living room. Lovely. Just lovely. Not. We painted and then waited for the sale. Then we waited to get it installed and HOORAH! it went in today.

As soon as FTD got home from school, he and DH started working on the new and gorgeous bed.








And here we are now. The bed is put together, his clothes are back in the closet, and tomorrow I hope to get the stuff back on the shelves. In the meantime, FTD is doing that which he likes best. And he's back in the room he loves the best.

NEW POST SCRIPT: Exactly 12 hours after the carpet was installed, FTD woke up and barfed all over it. Poor kid. I think it was the excitement of having a 'new' room. Bless his heart.