The Classroom

One of the major reasons we decided upon this house was the excellent back room off of the kitchen.  It was perfect for a classroom!  I can work in the kitchen and see what's going on because of the pass through and I have plenty of room for all of my bookshelves (and I can't seem to stop myself from adding more and more books, thus needing more and more bookshelves.  I mean who can turn down a good book?  Books are awesome... but I digress) and art supplies (something else I have tons and tons of... I am a bit of a hoarder of all things that I think I can make into something later).  I can also gate off the entry and keep the baby contained.  I have yet to work my make-over magic on the walls, but who doesn't love wood paneling?  ok... me, I don't love wood paneling!  For now, my strategy is to plaster the walls with posters, art work, bulletin boards and teaching aids... and also the windows... because there's not enough wall for all of the cool stuff I want to hang up.  Hmmmm.... the ceiling is empty.....

You may recognize the file cabinet in the corner.  It was a fun refinish job and is now full of art supplies.  The white bookshelves were cobbled together from one 10 foot tall unit intended for the garage.  We found someone giving away a garage full of these shelves on craigslist and are using them in several places.  I basically cut the sides of one shelf into 3 pieces and used some small scraps to make braces for the tops.  After attaching them all together the whole thing wanted to fold over and twist apart so I had to add a back to the center section.  I happened to have a scrap of 1/4 inch plywood laying about that did the job.  Actually, there is very little in this picture that was not a hand-me-down, free-find, cheap used treasure, or curbside rescue... Even some of the technology pieces!

City Room

When we first moved into our home I decided that this room was one of the worst.  The blue and red is atrocious, there were holes chewed in the wall and door by a large dog, and the carpet smelled like a dog as well.  Unfortunately, we were financially unable to deal with the carpet after putting everything into closing costs, but after some vacuuming and carpet deodorizer the smell seems to have left (yay!).  Eventually I'll get some new carpet, but it'll do for now.

At any rate, This room was high on my priority list, and thus my second project.  First, wall repairs were done.  Spackle does wonders, I even used it to patch the door!  After using Kilz on the entire room (including that lowered bit of the ceiling... seriously who paints the ceiling like that?), I was ready to start on the walls.  At this point I had acquired many different partially full gallons of interior latex acrylic paint in various colors from various sources... Some were the remaining colors from the previous owners, some were gathered from curbside and craigslist, and some were from a local reuse center.  Lots of paint,  but not enough of one color for an entire room... I knew what I wanted (I had a pinterest board full of ideas after all), and I have a good eye for color mixing, so I got out my trusty paint mixing drill attachment and started mixing what I had together.

I knew I wanted a light brown for most of the walls, so I mixed that first (you can make brown out of almost anything).  I had also found a really cute room on Pinterest that had a 3 tone striped wall in turquoise, orange, and green.  No problem there... I added some white to the leftover turquoise from my daughter's room and played a bit with some of the previous owner's leftover gallons of paint for the orange and green.  Believe it or not, those colors are also significantly lightened.  The master bedroom is currently painted entirely dark orange... even the trim (yuck).

This room has a neat little angled wall, so I decided to incorporate that into my next idea.  Who says you can only have one accent wall in a room?!  My son really likes transportation and I wanted to do a mural in his room, so a city seemed to be the way to go. First, I got out my trusty Home Depot yard stick and drew a simple outline in pencil.. A city skyline is mostly straight lines, so with a little bit of measuring, that wasn't so difficult.  I also drew some fun flying vehicles in the sky.  To keep the color scheme of the room from going totally nuts I stuck with a darker brown for the building silhouettes.  This brown was an unaltered left over color from the previous owners.  The trim in the hall bathroom is currently that color... and the walls are dark green.... yep.

So, after painting the buildings dark brown I added details in white.  I didn't want an overly colorful mural with all of the other colors going on in the room.  Cute right?  But, not done yet... this mural needs to glow in the dark!

Insert Martha Stewart's glow in the dark paint.  It's a little pricey for my cheapskate tendencies, but I waited for my 40% off a single item coupon from Joanne's and splurged a bit... plus I have a ton left over for more projects.... I also have a white tank top that looks perfectly clean in the light, but has glowing smudges on it in the dark (a fact which I continually forget when getting dressed, lol).  It took a few coats on the windows and moon, but it didn't take too long to do, and you can't hardly tell that the glow-in-the-dark paint is there during the daytime.  

After finishing the mural, I decided that it needed something else... a road shelf?  sure!  My son loves matchbox cars, so this gives him a fun place to play and interact with his city mural.  Like the shelves in my daughter's room, these are leftover from a cheap bookcase that didn't survive the move.  Because of the location of this shelf (next to the door), I knew that sharp corners would be an issue.  So I traced a curve from a plate and then cut on the line with a jigsaw.  After scuffing the surface up with some sandpaper I painted all sides of the shelf the same color as the mural.  Then I simply painted the road on them.  Surprisingly, several months later, the shelf is still attached to the wall.  I was seriously expecting my son to break it (lol, he is VERY rough on toys and furniture).

The bed in his room is an Ikea bunk bed.  The low profile of his bed works well with the low ceiling.  He has had it for a while so when we moved it was covered in stickers and marker, but it cleaned up pretty nice.  Honestly, I was surprised.  I was expecting to have to paint it.  But after using my favorite Dollar Tree cleaner, Totally Awesome, on it, it looked great (seriously, this stuff will clean anything.  I used it in my art room to get virtually every kind of art supply off of the tables... even sharpie).  The dresser was a refinished garage find (see entry in the furniture section).  All in all, I am much happier with the finished look of this room than I am with my daughter's room.

Of course, it didn't look all nice and polished like that for long... sigh...