Prefences of a Preteen

When we broke it to Lucas that we were thinking of moving last year, we thought it might help the transition if we mentioned he could decorate his room any way he wanted. It took us a year but we finally got around to his room and its makeover.  In July Aaron was going to Seattle for a marathon of meetings and  Lucas and I decided to jump on the project.

From the beginning Lucas had a very specific idea in his head about how his room would look, what colors to use, where he wanted the bed, how to hang pictures, etc. I've patted myself on my back for how much we compromised and made it work for both of us. :)

This is the "before." When I took the pic, we had already moved out a lot of his things but not that much. The previous owner had a thing for focus walls and so many of the rooms have multi-colored walls.

We hadn't hung anything up.  So sad looking. :)

And this is where I forgot to get a before picture.  But we completely reconfigured his closet.  We added all the baskets and buckets ourselves.

Luke didn't have a whole lot that needed hanging up and that small black dresser was not cutting it with everything else.. The thick white lines in the picture below represent where the wooden dividers were, along with a lower clothes bar,  We ended up taking a reciprocating saw to the divider all the way up to where the arrow is and took out the other bar.  

The bottom shelf with the 3 black fabric boxes is actually the bookshelf we had in our Seattle family room turned on its side.  We bought 5 black boxes and another white plastic bucket "system" from Ikea.  It's been a great way to handle clothes and other stuff.  Everything now has a home!

 

He wanted grey walls (great, since a lot of the new house has been painted grey) and then florescent green stripes.  Again I like stripes but we ended up compromising with dark green instead of day-glo.  Phew. 

Anyway, here's the after.  We painted stripes, hung black curtains that "had to have grommets" since that was what Lucas liked. We hung the Star Wars poster he got from his grandparents for Christmas and we took out the black dresser and shifted the bookcase to this opposite corner.

We added labels to all his baskets and buckets.  Just vinyl and my Cricut paper cutter.

Works great.

Lucas wanted stripes all the way around the room but I lost steam.  Lucas was fabulous at putting together lamps, his chair, his desk and his shelving.  Basically did it all on his own.  But painting was not his passion and I got left with most of the work.  So I made the executive decision: no stripes around the whole room.   BUT, I do think I might continue the strips around to the left past the bed and the shelves.  It feels kind of abrupt to have the stripes just stop.  We'll see if I get the energy to go back and paint more. Give me a few weeks.

We finally got him a desk with a new lamp and shelves for all his schoolwork and Lego/Bionicle building.  For me "Storage" was the theme of the room and I made sure he had enough drawers, shelves, buckets and baskets for all his stuff.

The motorcycle picture above his bed was free since he won the poster at school from the book fair and the frame we literally received for a wedding present.  There has been a number of pictures in the frame over the years, but I took those out and spray painted the original purple mat with its flower power picture to black and then added the poster.



View from corner.

So again here's the before...

And here's the after.

He loves it so that's all that matters.