Decorating Fun | Operation Home

So, Lucas’s room has definitely experienced some growing pains along the way, but I think we’re finally on the right track. Hallelujah!!

When we last left off his room looked like this….

If you remember from this post, I’ve had some difficulty keeping my valiant decorating attempts in his room intact. First, half of the license plate wall went kaput, next the bicycle print over the bed went away, then his wall lamp was a goner. The final straw came when I was forced to remove the curtains. Every time Lucas climbed up the end of his bed to go to sleep (which happened an unfortunate number of times per bedtime) he’d tug on them. Or hide in them. Or curl up in them. Oh, no… they weren’t just curtains. They were a fort. Boys. Give them anything and I guarantee they can find a way to build a fort with it.

One morning I walked into Lucas’s room and the curtain rod was hanging on by a thread. I had horrifying visions of the metal rod plummeting down and konking my sweet baby boy on the head, so down it came. Dunzo.

And every time I walked in there, his room proceeded to mock me with it’s strip-tease. More and more naked it became despite my best efforts.

I searched for different window treatments that Lucas would be less likely to pull on, but came up empty-handed. His window was so close to the corner of the room that it eliminated many options, including the cool panel curtains at Ikea that I’ve desperately wanted to use somewhere. I didn’t think roman shades were right for his room. And roller shades didn’t feel right either.

Then, I realized the solution was so simple (and free). Duh. Move the bed, smartie-pants.

So, we moved it to this orientation…..

SO MUCH BETTER.

The curtains went back up (after being reinforced with heavy-duty anchors) and he hasn’t touched them since.

I have to say, it absolutely amazes me when I’ve been at a decorating stand-still with a room and can’t quite determine a plan…. Then, one simple change opens a world of possibilities. Kind of like our sofa switcheroo. Suddenly, I had a clear vision of the direction that the room needed to go. Finally!! I think I just need to play with furniture layout more in general. That seems to be the recurring theme here, huh?

Also, pay no attention to the license plates. They’re left over from my previously failed attempt at a license plate headboard/wall. I’ve actually acquired 20 more license plates since then (thanks to my glorious friend Sara) and have a plan for them, so the current arrangement that you see before you will be relocated and expanded upon at some point soon.

Anyhoo, next, I measured and realized that the chest of drawers in our room (we finally found a long, low dresser to replace it… Holla!!) would fit perfectly on his angled wall….

Here’s the before…

And Now…

Hello again, dear bicycle print!!! And note the cool car built by Pop! This change now opens up this entire wall…

Which looked like his before…

…for his toy chest, shelving for books and other playthings…

A localized play-zone, if you will. which could never have happened with the previous layout. I’m thinking shelves around his toy chest for sure. Maybe a little built in desk? Or an organizational unit of some sort? Lucas is asking Santa for a race track that gets mounted to the wall. If he remains on the Nice List and Santa brings the goods, maybe we can work that in somehow. Hmmm…. Possibilities. And excitement!! No, excitement(squared)!! This is the part of decorating that I love the most. When it clicks.

But, now I have a small dilemma. The dresser is a dark walnut-toned wood. Part of me really likes it that way up against the navy walls. But another part is considering painting it a lighter color. But it’s a really great dresser in perfect shape. The thought of painting good wood makes me feel green (with illness, not envy). So, paint the dresser? Leave it au naturel?? What’s your take on this subject? Tell me. I wanna know.

Before we put our last house on the market, we engaged in full house decluttering. This process included renting a storage unit and storing every item that we didn’t absolutely need in an effort to make our closets appear more spacious. Several weeks ago (almost a year and a half later), we finally got around to unloading our storage unit and bidding it adios.

I’ll tell ya, sifting through things that you forgot you had is pretty fun. And I say that literally. Its like shopping out of your own stuff for free. Among the old Lucas baby paraphernalia and random college textbooks we found a few gems worthy of sharing.

First is this neat, hand-carved whistle that Joey’s had since he was young…

It sounds like a train whistle when you blow into it. The picture of the train is burned on. And check this out…

I wonder if his patent ever went through. Next, we have this awesome ink drawing of St. John’s Bridge in Oregon….

Then, I found a box of memorabilia from our wedding. It was only five and a half years ago, but I have to wonder why I boxed some of this stuff up. For example, our cake topper…

I had searched high and low for a cake topper with a bride and groom on a bicycle, only to find one cartoony (read: ugly) one, so Joeys parents graciously offered to make us one. It was drawn by my mother-in-law and cut out in wood by my father-in-law. And it turned out awesome. Grossly enough, it still had frosting on it when I pulled it out of the box. I’m wondering why I packed it like that. Ick.

And just for fun, because it’s difficult to describe the travesty that were my bangs as a child….

They seriously went back to the middle of my head. Heehee! Ah, memories! Growing them out was interesting (and not in a fun way).

After tossing these items around in my head for a while, I decided to use most of them (Ie: not my bang pic) in a casual photo collage wall. I know… Another collage wall? Oh yes. You bet. But I wanted this one to feel more organic and natural. Less uniform and organized than our living room photo collage.

I decided to extend upon this wall in our foyer….

You can see I was already experimenting with placement of the ink drawing. I decided to start by creating some easy art with our cake topper. Here are my materials…

The shadow box is from Ikea and the fabric remnant was 99 cents from Walmart. I simply cut out a small swatch of the fabric and taped it onto the back of the mat with scotch tape…

Then, I used a spare Command strip from a package of utensil hooks to adhere the cake topper within the shadow box. I cut small pieces to fit behind the cake topper like so….

And Command-stuck it to the matting. Ta-Dah!!

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Then, I took the whistle and tied a piece of twine around it….

And hung it with a finishing nail on the wall between the two existing pictures. I left the twine long so that I could adjust the length if needed once hung.

I hung the shadow box next to the whistle and added a double black frame from Ikea that I also found in storage. I filled it with a piece of striped fabric layered with a scrap of wrapping paper…

Then, I stepped back and observed…

But the arrangement felt a little lost on the wall and slightly off balance. I adjusted the length of the twine on the whistle to lower it some and added a few more frames up top (that were also found in storage. Seriously, shopping in your old stuff rocks.)….

Much better. Ill probably tweak the arrangement a smidge as time goes on, just because that’s what I do, but I’m really satisfied with it for now.

I didn’t use any techniques to plan out frame placement with this one. I just winged it and hung the frames where I felt like it. I’m really liking the different styles of frames and the mix of black, white, silver and wood tones. It might be fun to extend this one from floor to ceiling. Hmmm…. Oh the possibilities.

Here are a few close-ups….

It feels good to have gotten started on this wall, for sure. It stared at me for far to long just begging for some pizazz. So, anyways that’s my story of forgotten treasures and frame walls! I hope everyone has a happy Wednesday!! 🙂