Saturday, August 17, 2013

Room Re-do

I decided to deep-clean the boys' room last week.  It took 3 days, spread over 2 weeks, and it all started with my feeling the need to vacuum.....
Anyhow.  I'll spare you the process.  Because reading the process might allow you a glimpse of how my brain works.  And quite frankly, that could be a bit scary.
The boys have shared a room since Jacob was about 18 months old.  It was a bit young for Jake to make the transition from his own room and crib to a different room and a big bed, but we had made plans to move him over that summer when we found out we were expecting in 2011.  Even though we lost that baby, we still went ahead and moved him as planned for the summer, to save on electric costs.  (Each room upstairs requires a window unit.)
Zadie and the new baby will be sharing a room for a year or two.  Even if it's a boy (which, for the record, I think it is), I think it's fine when children are very young for brothers and sisters to sleep in the same room.
Personally, I think it's best for kids to share rooms.  Maybe that comes from the fact that I never had a room to myself until I was 18, and I'm quite sure I turned out wonderful.  (ha ha)  But I think sharing a room teaches kids good life lessons about boundaries, sharing, accountability, and responsibility.  So even if we had the money to add on, or for some reason moved into a bigger house, I'm not sure I'd want all my kids to have their own separate rooms.  It just seems.... lonely.
We were given a set of used bunk beds.  We'd been planning on bunks for the boys, but in pricing them new, had decided we could build some ourselves for much cheaper.  We thought we'd have to build them anyways, as the sloped ceilings could prove to be a height restriction.  But these fit just perfectly!
So we put them up in the boys' room.  That way, it's already kind of set up to move another bed in, if Baby is a brother, or they'll permanently have a play space where the other bed was, if Baby is a sister.  (Incidentally, if Baby is a sister, the girls will probably eventually move into what is now the boys' room, as it is slightly larger, and we all know how much stuff girls require!)
Anyhow:  So here are the photos!  Not a complete makeover, as it still has the nursery paint job, but definitely a deep-cleaning, re-arranging, different feel to the whole room.
(I should have taken a "before" picture, but when I started cleaning, I didn't know this is where it would end up.  I know I've probably got one somewhere, but I am not sorting through my 10,000 unsorted photos just to find it.)

The bunk beds cleaned up quite nicely!  (They'd been stored in an abandoned house.)
There is a set of drawers that can be slid in under the bunks.  We decided the amount of space they take up vs. how little the drawers actually would hold made them not worth the effort.  We'll slide totes under if we need extra storage.
And the beds are made, solely for the photo op, since we don't make the beds..... Ever.

Play Central:  All Legos, wooden train tracks, and matchbox cars/farm equipment are gone from my living room!

Looking back toward the door (standing by the window).  Do you get the feel for how little the room is?  Jacob's dresser is the wood one.  The matching desk and dresser are Nathan's.

The tree trunk is a doorway to the only closet in the house that's not in the master bedroom.....

......So we use the enclosed dormer as the boys' closet.
The tiny dresser was Jacob's dresser, which I repurposed as a linen dresser to hold all the twin-size sheets (rather than having to go downstairs to get them).  We moved the bigger wood-grain dresser over from Zadie's room (even though he only uses 3 drawers), and she now is using an antique dresser.

The bunks have a ladder, but Zadie can zip right up it, so we keep it down under the bed during the day and set it up at bedtime, so it's easier and safer to get down in the middle of the night.  Besides, that thing takes up a lot of real estate!
Nathan is currently in the top bunk, but Jacob really wants to sleep up there.  So we may switch residents each time we wash sheets.

2 comments:

Amy Jo said...

This looks great! I love the quilts on the bunk beds. Those bunk beds look really nice. I'm needing to get our spare bedroom ready to move Ty up...maybe this will help motivate me. :)

Rachel said...

Their Grandma (Paul's mom) made the quilts for them.