Alex's Room!

We actually finished Alex's room several weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting pictures.  Most of the rooms that we've redone in the house only make it to the "finished" stage where the walls are painted and furniture is replaced, and it takes years to actually get all the molding up, pictures on the walls, curtains, and other decorations.  For whatever reason my pregnant brain made up it's mind that Alex's room needed to be finished, not just "finished", and so while the paint has been done for months, I spent several weeks working to actually decorate his room.  And of course I had a specific idea in my mind of what I wanted in his room, and of course I'm far to cheap to pay for what I want, so I ended up with numerous diy projects. 


But I hereby proudly proclaim Alex's room finished!. . .Although we are still missing the closet doors, but my awesome pregnancy logic is willing to overlook that minor detail for now. . .

Alex was a little upset that I was taking pictures of his room instead of reading him a book. . .

To be honest I want more cute things to put on the shelves of the night stand and bed, but in all reality my son is 2, and whatever I put there will not stay there for long.  The room only looked this clean for the 5 minutes it took me to take these pictures.  Alas, there is no such thing as a magazine perfect room with a 2 year old.

A big thanks to Laurendeaus for the free bed and thanks to the Pattersons for the free bookshelf and nightstand!!

I spent far too much time cutting out those stupid letters to spell "Alex" because I was too cheap to buy them.  The curtains are the second attempt, (see my previous blog post for the disgraceful first attempt) and while they look better and make awesome blackout curtains, I'm still not sure if I love them.  I wanted to paint the inside of the nightstand and bookshelf green just to add that custom touch, and once again I was too cheap to buy real paint, so I ended up painting about 6 coats of acrylic craft paint, yes the kind that comes in the little bottle for $0.50, and yes, it took 5 bottles and a ridiculous amount of time, as all of my other projects seem to do.    

Matt and I decided a while ago that we always wanted to have one or two religious pictures in our children's rooms.  I tried really hard to find a picture of a temple under construction so that it would kind of go with the construction/truck theme, but none were to be found, so I finally settled on the $0.75 picture of the Logan Temple from the Distribution Center and a $2 frame from DI.  Yay for repainting DI frames!

 

Alex absolutely loves trucks these days, and being the rather picky person I am, I didn't really want the typical cutesy truck pictures for the walls.  I wanted something unique.  I spent hours searching stores like Home Goods and Gordmans, and many more hours browsing the web for some sort of truck artwork.  I found some really cool HDR photos of construction equipment, but couldn't find any sort of link to where I could buy a print - not that I would probably have been willing to pay for it anyway.  Finally I gave up and resolved to take some pictures of my dad's vintage truck toys and use those.  I was also lucky enough to find a set of shadow boxes in our basement that had been left here by previous owners. I painted the boxes, spent $10 on prints at Sam's Club, mod podged the photos to the back of the boxes, and hung them up in a photo collage.  I quite like how they turned out, and it is just that much cooler that these are the same toys that Alex plays with when he goes over to great grandma's house.  

Out of everything, this one is my favorite!  I really wanted some type of fun truck/construction lamp, but once again I couldn't find anything.  I spent weeks trying to figure out how to make one.  Then I came across this brilliant idea on Pinterest where you print out a picture, tape it to the inside of a lampshade, turn on the lamp, and trace the picture on the outside of the shade.  GENIUS!  I bought this lamp for $17 at Walmart - which even that was more than I wanted to pay, but all of the thrift stores and second hand stores continued to let me down so I splurged - repainted the base with the left over green paint from the bookshelf and night stand, and traced/colored the bulldozer on the shade with sharpies and colored pencils.  A part of me really wants to go color some sort of design on all of the lampshades in our house now, it was actually pretty fun. . .

Now that Alex's room is finished, we've started working on the downstairs bathroom.  I have one more project to complete in there and then that room will be completed as well.  Yay for progress!!