Boys’ Room DIY Improvements

The week the boys were in camp at Elliot’s preschool I went on a little DIY bender. It was so much fun to have 4 hours a day to work on this project with minimal interruptions. This is what I did:

Made black-out curtains. The boys’ room faces east and it is VERY bright first thing in the morning. I’d like to delay wake up as long as possible. In theory these should also help them fall asleep faster at night when it is still light out. In practice that isn’t working. It does help keep their room cooler when I draw them closed during the day. I am really happy with the way they came out.

Painted some furniture. Specifically, their old dresser from the nursery and a desk and chair I found by the side of the road. Can’t beat that price.

Before:

After:

If you can’t tell I’m trying to work a subtle nautical theme. I don’t want it to be too literal but still capture the beachy/boaty spirit.  I really don’t know if it does, but in any case, it’s a start. This was the first time I’ve done a project like this and it was a lot of fun. I made quite a few mistakes. The most obvious being that if you plan to paint something a dark color like navy you shouldn’t start with white primer. It took 5 coats of paint to finally get the color I wanted.

Here is the old nursery desk after I repainted it. Its size and shape are not ideal for the space under the window, but it’s what we have so I’m working with it. It’s the same color as the desk, it’s just bad lighting in this photo.

       

And finally, here was my little sidekick through out the whole process. He was more (Monday) or less (Friday) content to hang out or take naps in his car seat. What a kid!