Jack's all boy room

Last summer we redid Ella's room so that it didn't look like she lives in a dungeon basement.  Jack has been waiting patiently for his turn to come out of the darkness, but he finally started wondering where his pretty room was.

 

The room was dull, dingy, and screamed basement. There wasn't really a place for books and toy storage outside of the drawers under his bed {which are wonderful but not enough}, so we put this white cabinet in {above}, but it was always a bit tipsy and made me nervous.  This definitely wasn't going to work for two boys - we're going to move Nate in here when he stops waking up talking and singing in the middle of the night.  Yes, I'm serious.

I didn't really have a direction for the room except that it needed to be blue, the only worthy color in Jack's world.  When I found this home décor-weight blue camo fabric on clearance for $2/yd, I bought them out.  I used some for curtains, and will use more for other projects around the room.  I have thoughts of making a teepee out of it.  Wouldn't that be fun?

 We painted the walls ultra white to make it as bright and cheerful as possible, which was a little hard for Jack to swallow, but he only has one window {which is always in the shade} and there is blue nearly everywhere, so he came around.  The thing that makes the room is the peg board Handsome Hero installed along one wall.  I love this wall.  I like to pet it.

The bed area is the least complete.  I don't have bedding yet, but it will be blue!  I'm trying to figure out a solution to the difficulty of making an upper bunk.  Any ideas?  I'm thinking of doing away with the top sheet and replacing it with a kid sized comforter/duvet that can just be folded at the foot during the day.  Also, we are planning to hang lanterns from the wall by each bunk so the boys each have a bunk reading light, and I'm going to make something for book storage.  Not sure what.  Maybe a book sling with a pocket for the flashlight?  Maybe a narrow basket that we can attach to the wall?  I don't know, but it will be pink!  No, wait.  That's not right.  Blue!

These cute car prints came from Ikea and I already had the frames and mats.

I made this sign by simply tracing some letters and then nailing around my line, just eyeballing distance, and wrapping string randomly around.  I still need to trim my threads!

The licence plates are from everywhere we've lived plus New York, where my sister lives and Handsome Hero's brother lived.  The pegboard baskets came from a store that was closing in the mall.  I grabbed all they had. I love that we can rearrange everything if need be.  Peg board is just so BOY, you know?

Nothing's permanent.  Everything is hung with hooks.

Jack loves his room.  It took him a little while to be okay with it being white instead of blue, but he really enjoys playing in here now.  He doesn't want it messed up and is beginning to take ownership of cleaning the space.  I hope he stays that way.

Oh, and here's his closet.  I didn't paint it, but I did move his workbench in here since it's still usable beneath hanging shirts.

Here's the cool part.  See that little door?  It leads to an under-the-stairs storage area that we are planning to make into a secret hide out.  There's even another exit out the other side for escaping pirates and stuff.  I'm already planning my Mom of the Year party.

This might be my favorite room in the house.  I think it's because we took a design risk by putting up the pegboard.  Or maybe it's because we worked together on it and had fun in the process.  Maybe it's just because I love doing kid rooms.

So what's still to do?  I found a low cabinet for book storage to take the place of the bookshelf under the window, which is actually a shoe shelf from our closet.  You can't put any books upright and they keep spilling out, so that's next.  Then bedding, bunk lights, and a book holder of some kind and we're done!

Until it's time to work on the secret passage way....

Painting a chalkboard wall

I love chalkboards.  LOVE them.  With chalkboard paint available in not only black but also several other colors, you can put a chalkboard on pretty much anything.  I've painted cabinet doors, glass canisters, and now a wall.

When we moved in, the basement looked like this. 

Gradually we got organized and it started looking like this.  BORRRRRRING!  About the most you can say is that it is a bit more organized.

This area was our homeschool zone, so I needed it to be functional and fun.  The first thing I did was paint a chalkboard wall. 

The basement is really large and there's lots of natural light in here {there's a walkout to what used to be a pool, so I wasn't concerned about painting a black wall. We chose not to use a magnetic primer.  I've used it before with only marginal success after three coats.  At $20 per quart and a minimum of six coats likely, we opted for another route.  We bought five of these magnetic knife racks from Ikea and spaced them across the top of the wall.  They blend into the wall, but are very strong. 

The kids LOVE writing on the chalk board and love cleaning it even more.  Isn't that weird?  They like to take wet rags to it together and then blow on the wall until it's dry so that they can write again.  I don't know how much we'll use it in actual teaching, but it's a huge hit as a toy!

The basement is far from done.  In fact, until a couple of weeks ago this was the only wall down here that had been painted.  But it's a start.  I'll share some more basement updates next week.

p.s.  If you are interested in painting with chalk board paint, it's very easy.  It needs to be stirred really well, but it's not hard to apply or anything.  It comes in many colors now, or you can mix your own chalk board paint with recipes all over the internet.  I would like to try that sometime, but for this area, I really like the old fashioned black board look.