Fox's Toddler Bedroom Update

I don't know that I have explicitly stated it here, but we are currently living in my in-laws house while they serve an Mormon/LDS mission.  We are really sad to have them gone (especially with the upcoming birth of the twins), but happy that they are doing something that they have always wanted to do.

There are definitely pros and cons to living in someone else's house (more on that later), but one of the big difficulties was the room that Fox sleeps in.  It was the room that Adam had shared with his little brother for just about his whole life, and once he and his brother left for college had essentially become a between-semester dumping ground for papers, boxes, old clothes, and guitars.

I remember the first time I ventured into this room, I could hardly walk in, because there was so much stuff piled on the floor and against the wall.

Adam, his brother and his mother are all quite clean, but because the room wasn't a permanent place for the boys to live, it just never got cleared out (and they were never home long enough to go through most of it).  And his mom was worried about clearing it out, for fear of throwing away something important, so it ended up just sitting in a state of semi-disaster for close to eight years.

Once we knew we would be moving in, I wanted us to sleep upstairs (the idea of having the master bedroom in the basement didn't thrill me at all), and didn't want Fox way downstairs (it is kind of a hike down to those bedrooms), so something had to be done about Adam's old bedroom.

My mother-in-law, Adam and I all spent about a week boxing stuff up, donating and throwing things out.  Then we had to get rid of a few pieces of furniture that weren't going to work, and we took apart the bunk bed and started moving some of his nursery furniture into that room.

After my in-laws left for their mission, I wrestled with whether or not we should tear down the wallpaper.  Both my in-laws were totally fine with it (apparently my father-in-law never liked it anyway), so it wasn't an issue for them, but I knew it would be a big job getting it down and putting the room back together and painting before I was too pregnant to do it.

Finally, in August, my mom came to visit, and told me that as part of her visit, she would help us get the wallpaper down and the room painted.

And once we started on the wallpaper there was no going back.  It took us close to a week to tear it all down.  I have officially decided that I never want to wallpaper a room so that I don't have to tear it down, because it was such a pain.

My mom went home before we finished, and then I spent several weeks trying to figure out a paint color that I wouldn't hate.  This was surprisingly difficult.  The room is pretty small, and the walls were a dark blue with the wallpaper, making the room look even smaller.  Once we tore it down, every shade of grey that I chose looked extremely blue on the walls.

On my fourth or fifth sample, I finally found one that I thought would work.  Conveniently, my mom came back up for a day, and spent the entire day painting that room, bless her.  It completely changed the feel of the room, and I am totally loving it!

We are not totally done yet, but this is the progress report so far! I am still hoping to change the light fixture (anyone know what that kind of light fixture is called?  I am hoping to only replace the glass piece, and not the whole fixture), add a valence over the window, as well as a roller shade to block out the light, and possibly consider getting a rug.  Who knows if that will all happen, but currently I am MUCH happier with the room the way it looks now!

Easy for playing, and sleeping, and much prettier to look at.