A Room with a View

Hi-Hat has been wishing for a room makeover for some time now.  I don't really have many photos of his "before" room to share with you (well, I do, but they are stored on an external hard drive on another floor of the house, and I'm comfortable right where I am at the moment and don't want to go transfer them).  Instead, let me paint a picture for you.  On the walls, picture a lovely color with the name "Pulte Mist," which can best be described as the texture and color of sidewalk chalk that has lost its white balance.  On those lovely walls, picture handpainted murals of musical instruments, sheet music and staffs of music notes.  Envision framed pictures of dear little tiny Hi-Hat cradling a French horn, strumming a guitar that is taller than he is, and holding up a drum that is bigger than his own face.  Picture dents, scrapes, marks and gauges in the drywall from 5 years of play on little boy drum sets.  No corner of the room was exempt from these marks as the drum sets found homes in all corners of the room during countless room rearrangements.  Add to this basic background stacks of paperbacks, piles of Nerf darts, rocks, souvenir flags, trophies, silly bands, matchbox cars, Legos, iPod accessories, crumpled papers, dirty socks, pin-up posters from Scholastic book fairs and hand-drawn pictures tacked haphazardly to the walls.

On the one hand, I kind of liked his space filled with the stuff of Hi-Hat.  On the other hand, it made me want to scream, "if I have to pick up and magic erase this room one more time..."  It was time.  Time for a new, big guy space with room for all his little treasures and free of clutter.  Time for some color and imagination.  Time for me to find all my painting supplies.

Hi-Hat's vision for his room is best summarized as urban.  He is just the sweetest little guy, who happens to play the drum set, and sweet and tender as he is, he has list the slightest bit of edge to him.  You really have to look for it, but it's there.  So I was kind of excited about this urban theme.  His colors - aqua, orange and steel.  His inspiration - cables and light.  We still have a ways to go, but here's the result after 4 days of hard work:

First, let me say that I went to pick up Rella from preschool yesterday and got some strange looks from the teachers.  Later that afternoon a neighbor outside asked if I had been painting something blue.  She laughed and pointed to my glasses.  How ridiculous - I had no idea I was in such speckled spectacles!

The painted result - blue walls and ceiling with an orange accent wall.  There will also be an orange pegboard on one of the blue walls, surrounded by a steel gray metal casing.

Now for the main decorative element.  I was so excited about this vinyl wall decal project, shipped directly to us from Singapore!  Once I laid out all the pieces, I wasn't quite sure what I had gotten myself into... The image on the right is what I accomplished after 30 minutes of measuring, taping, remeasuring, adjusting, taping, scraping, etc.  All while a certain 7-year-old was hopping around exclaiming, "Is it done?  When will it be ready?  How much more is left?"

Here are some snippets of my progress as we approached bedtime.  I got a system figured out, and it really was very easy, though quite tedious.  QUITE TEDIOUS!

And here's Hi-Hat by bedtime last night.  The work was almost done, but the ridiculous detail work would have to wait for the next day.

Ta-Da!  The Finished Product

Hi-Hat and I talked about the mural and what one might interpret from it (because we're thinkers like that).  What we came up with is that it encourages him not to keep his imagination and creativity caged up, but to let them fly.  What do the lightposts and wires mean?  Well, that's a deep thought for another sleepless night.  I think it would be kind of fun to lay in bed at night and look at the mural and just think.  Or try to follow all the lines, or count the dots, or think about the folds that would be required to make the paper birds.  So, phase one of the project is done.  Now on to the pegboard and deciding what furniture is granted entry back into his wonderfully clean and clutter-free room.