One Room Challenge – Week 1 – Spring 2016

07 Apr One Room Challenge – Week 1 – Spring 2016

Hello!  I am excited to be a Guest Participant in the Spring 2016 One Room Challenge!  We are always working on a project – or five – around here, but sometimes I feel we have a bit of a “cobbler has no shoes” issue.  I finish client projects, and they turn out so lovely, and I think, “I could live in just this room”, ha, and truthfully, I lose steam on my own home.  We have lived in our nearly 100-year-old fixer upper for 5 years now, and we have come a long, long way, but we still have many rooms to complete.  We have had to do so much work on the “underbelly” of our house – plumbing, roof, plaster, etc. – that we are really just now into the decorating part.  Which of course, is the fun part.  Having the Kids Bathroom done has been so so amazing, it really felt like our home renovation reached a milestone when that project was complete.

Image by Brian McWeeney Photography

For  the One Room Challenge, I could have chosen several rooms, but I eventually decided on my Boys Bedroom.  Their room has fallen apart a bit over the last year, and it is really important to my husband and I that our kids have a thoughtful and organized space to call their own.  Not that it always looks put together, but we want it to be imaginative, and we desire for everything to have a place.  With four kids a year apart, organization is SO key, though we are not always successful at keeping everything together.  It seems very cyclical at times, but now that most of the heavy construction is finished around our home, I feel we can start giving things a place to go.

My little boys are best buddies and have been since day one, it seems. (with lots of normal brother shenanigans too, of course)   They really don’t know life without each other, and I still treasure the memories of my oldest getting in the crib with his baby brother in those early years.  They just loved each other so much and did not want to be apart.  There is a special respect and appreciation between them that is very tender.

Throwback photo.  Oh, these sweet faces!

In my opinion, their room is large, especially for an older home, so we felt there was plenty of space to get creative with.  These boys love sharing a room together, but they are getting a little older now (they are in 1st and 2nd grade), and are therefore closer to sleepover years.  It feels like time to upgrade their room.

They LOVED the idea of bunk beds, and I have always thought those bunk rooms are so fun.  For a hot second, we considered renovating our attic and putting a kids space up there, but it ended up being out of the budget/too big of a hassle.

I wanted to show you some before pictures so you can get an idea of what the space feels like.  And please know none of these “before” photos are styled, they are real-life photos of a room that has gotten a bit out of control.

We have had these darling vintage Jenny Lind beds since we moved in.  The below picture shows the back wall of the room, opposite the door when you walk in.  As you can see, there used to be curtain rods with drapes, but the rods broke. #boys

For a kids room, I really like the end to end bed setup simply because it allows for a large amount of play space in the center of the room.  That type of furniture placement does not always work in a room, but it functions really well here, and in my girls room actually.

In this image, the door on the left goes to the boys closet, and the door on the right goes out to the hallway.  We need a little toy reorganization obviously.  : )  Also, see how the old oil-based paint on the doors has yellowed over time?

Their closet is small, but for two little boys, it works fine.  Thinking ahead a few years, however, I worry they are going to outgrow the current configuration.  The space is a bit awkward, and I believe we could tweak some things and make it more useable.  We have cleared everything out since I took the above photo.  You can see how the closet factors in here.  It is in its original 1919 state – built-in dresser and shelves plus cedar!

The following picture shows the area to the left of the closet.  The little bump-out you see in the corner is due to our Master Bathroom renovation.  To gain 18 inches of space in our shower, we had to create this column in the Boys Room.  We added book racks to it to give it a purpose, and that solution has worked well, but it still bothers me a bit.

I’m pumped about the plans I have which I will share next Wednesday, and I will be sharing more about the space each week for six weeks until May 12th.  I think we have arrived at a design scheme that will be both practical and fun for my two rambunctious boys, but boy, do we have a lot of work to do!  : )

PS – Special thanks to Linda from Calling It Home, the Creator and Founder of the One Room Challenge, and also to House Beautiful, the media sponsor for this season’s challenge.