I come from a family with eight kids. When I was a girl, all I wanted was a pink bedroom. My parents weren't crazy about bright colors, so what I ended up with was more like white with a pink tinge. We didn't have much money either, so I didn't even have flooring...just bare plywood, but I did have a little purple rug beside my bed!
When our older kids were growing up, Brian and I didn't have much money either, so their rooms weren't much better than what I grew up with. In fact we often joked about our decorating scheme being stripes and polka dots....meaning we had mudded the joints and screws in the drywall, but there was no paint. I guess that's why I got a little carried away with decorating our kids' rooms in later years!
When we built our house on my parents' farm, the boys' bedrooms were in the basement with very high ceilings. In Justin and Jeremy's room, we gave them a 'Swiss Family Robinson' theme. Brian built them loft beds and I painted a blue ceiling and added clouds to the sky. I then painted huge trees on the walls. We even made some 'real' trees. Brian took the hard cardboard tube that comes inside carpet, cut it in half and put it on an outside corner. I used drywall compound to create a rough surface and painted it to look like a poplar tree trunk. I them added some fake branches. What I didn't think about was just how much dust those branches would collect! The decorating shows never told me that part!
Danny wanted an 'under the sea' theme, so Brian built his bed to look like a sunken ship. I sponge painted the room in a turquoise color and added plants and some coral to the lower walls. Justin drew some sharks and fish on the walls, but before we could finish painting them, disaster struck....our basement flooded, and soon the under the sea room had a stream flowing through it! When we finally gave up on fighting the never ending flood, and decided to move, all of my hard work was ripped down! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures available. I don't think I'll be talked into doing another under the sea theme again!
Once we got moved to our next home, and construction was complete, it wasn't long before the boys put in a new request....a castle theme!
This was many years ago, and this room eventually became Danica's room.
Later, I painted a Mario themed room for Justin. I'm not sure it actually looks like the game, but if nothing else it was bright and colourful!
We built our new house almost 5 years ago, and again I asked the kids for ideas for their bedrooms.
Jeremy chose a teal colour, but he also likes camo, so I decided to try something new. I painted a base coat teal, then used a plastic garbage bag to apply some brown. I started in the closet....thankfully, because it's much harder than it looks, and didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped!
This is how the closet walls look.
When I finished the closet and started on the bedroom walls, I somehow forgot to paint the teal base coat, and started applying the brown with the bag. So, I made the best of my mistake and applied the teal in the same way, and then went back with a sponge to touch up any areas that were missed.
Still not quite the way I had planned, but I think it's better than the closet!...and Jeremy liked it, so that's what matters!
For the rest of the walls, I painted a base coat of ivory at the top, and teal on the bottom half of the wall. I then sponged on a camo pattern in a band between the two colours. I like the sponge technique much better than the garbage bag!
It's hard to get a picture of the whole room, but this is how it turned out.
The inspiration for Danica's new room came from a purple bed spread that we gave her for Christmas. We bought two shades of purple paint, and did a base coat in the lighter shade, then a dark purple band around the room, about the halfway mark. Then I mixed the two paint colours to make a third shade. I used this new colour and the darker shade to sponge paint the bottom half of the walls. It doesn't really show in the pictures, but the sponge painting looks like lilacs.
Later, we painted the bed white to match the rest of the furniture, and added white baseboards and trim.
We decorated the room with a 'frozen' theme, using a shower curtain on her closet, and large stickers on the wall.
It's surprising what you can do with a little bit of paint, to create a special room for your kids....and hopefully some special memories!
Wow, lots of work each time. Nice the kids had input and were pleased with the results.
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