Friday, August 10, 2012

Room Make-Over


I've been thinking for a while about re-doing Bug and Bunny's room.  Their room hasn't been re-done since it was GG's room and she was 6 or 7.  Back then we chose a stenciled flowers,


assorted bugs (butterflies / dragon flies / caterpillers etc. )


on white that goes up to a blue cloud sky ceiling theme.



Which GG loved at the time, but is definitely not right for a shared boy/girl room.

Let me side-track here for a second and tell you I've been getting to know a lot of fellow parents from Bug and Bunny's classes and I'm surprised to learn how many of them have kids sharing a room.  A lot of them boy/girl.  I guess when you live in Sunny So-Cal where the affordable houses are tiny, you do what you have to do.  It makes me feel better knowing we're not the only family where kids are having to share.  It can't go on indefinitely of course, but they're still young enough where it's not a big deal.  I do wonder how they'll both manage when we do finally get them separate rooms, but that's a struggle for another day.

So, re-doing the kids' bedroom.  I was flipping through the latest LTD Commodities magazine last night and came across these handy room appliques:
And I fell in love.   The appliques come on one big sheet and often you have to put the pieces together.


These are super easy peel and stick.  No special glue or adhesive required.  They can even be re-positioned and re-used.  All in all, pretty darn handy.

My love was not just limited to the appliques either, but with the colors of the room too! And I loved the head-height trim piece around the room.  I talked with The Hubs and he agreed with the scheme and to adding the trim. And it wasn't until the middle of the night when I realized, with our old lathe and plaster walls, I'm not sure we can successfully attach trim to our walls.  Our house is old.  Like 1930's old.  So we can't count on anything being built to modern standards, like regularly spaced studs. We'll have to look into it and see.  But the color scheme is absolutely possible and we can certainly make the rest of the trim in the room that cool green color. We also have a weird, not quite cove ceiling where the ceiling curves down into the wall on one side.



You can see Bunny has decorated her wall herself.  I tried to tell her coloring on her walls didn't make them frescos, but she just kept asking me what frescos were and I was too appalled at her lack of art education to answer.  Unfortunately, this weird quirk of architecture means we won't be able to use the crown molding seen in the inspiration photo, but maybe we can make just paint the whole ceiling that color instead.

What do you think?

Seriously.. Thoughts?

2 comments:

  1. I think if you paint the ceiling that dark you will make the room seem small ad cave like. I would either paint it white/off white or a lighter shade of the wall color. I love the appliques. But one question.... will your kids leave them applied or try to restick them? If you are worried about it (like I am) you may have to seal them in with some clear polyurethane.

    Love the new idea though.... and for the record my older son and daughter room shared until Kaleb was in the 1st grade.. :)

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  2. Hi Jen!! Let me dust of my interior architecture degree here and say that contrary to what everyone might think, painting a ceiling a dark color actually makes rooms feel bigger instead of smaller. It has a weird optical illusion effect making the ceiling feel much higher than it is and subsequently highlights the lighter areas of the room. So, in this case, since our room is small, having the darker ceiling is a bit ideal.

    Bug and Bunny have already had experience with appliques. Bug has some HALO ones LW got him as a gift. They move them around all the time. I think the rule I'll go for is having me place the larger ones with rules about not moving the big ones. And let them place (or replace whenever they want) the smaller ones around the room. And for $17 for the full set, if we need to replace them later on, it's not a huge deal.

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