Boys' New Bedroom

As I mentioned yesterday, the big boys moved into their new room on Tuesday! Our house has four bedrooms: the master bedroom with bathroom, a smaller room that was first the nursery and then became Levi and Owen's shared room, an even smaller room that first housed random furniture and then became Silas's nursery, and a giant room that contained the king-sized mattress (sometimes set on twin bed frames, sometimes on the floor) that someone gave us for free. It was the only room of the house (besides the den and basement, which are paneled) that I never painted, since I wasn't quite sure what it would become.

With baby #4 on the way, I knew we'd be needing our second crib free, so it became time to move Owen into a big boy bed, and thus began the transition from un-decorated guest room to official big boy room. As a Mother's Day present to me, Isaac corralled my dad into helping him paint. (I'm kidding -- Dad is always extremely willing to help, especially with painting!) I originally wanted warm orange walls, but we bought the (unbelievably expensive) zero-VOC paint and orange wasn't an option, so I settled for turquoise. ("Aquarium," officially.) To be honest, I hated it at first, but now I love the way the room has come together!

The white furniture (minus the crib) is mine from childhood. It has traveled with me all over the country, and it's a little surreal to me to have my two oldest children sleeping in it now!

Levi's bed. Owen sleeps in the trundle, tucked away in this picture. The window is flanked by cross-stitched birth announcements made by my dear, dear friend, Rebekah. Silas will move into the crib in a few months -- when he starts sleeping as late in the morning as the big boys, or when the baby arrives, whichever comes first. The curtains are black-out curtains from Walmart, hemmed by my mother-in-law (thanks, Oma!).

Some day, I'm going to do something cool in this space above Levi's bed. I have several ideas, mostly thanks to Pinterest. A big picture of the three boys, maybe, or something on 1 Corinthians 16:13?

The armchair is a hand-me-down from my in-laws. The rug is from IKEA, and I'm pleased to say that the boys really do enjoy driving their cars around the roads. The skinny bookshelf, Isaac and his dad made for me one Christmas, because I needed a small one to fit in a particular corner of the original nursery. I intended to paint it to match that room, but now I'm glad we never got around to it! I still haven't decided what color it ought to be.

You can see above that I opted to take off the ugly closet doors and put the dresser in the closet -- a brilliant move to save wall space. I've gotten one of the diaper boxes covered in orange duck tape (yes, the decorative stuff is "duck" and not "duct") for storage, as I did for our train-track storage a while back. I'll get to the others some day. I love the orange as an accent color, since I couldn't do the walls! In one other semi-crafty moment, I made closet dividers, mostly so that my husband knows whose clothes are whose:

Door hangers from Michael's, leftover paint from the walls, foam sticker letters from Target. I cut the notch in the top to make them hangers with a sharp knife.

I still have some finishing touches to do, obviously, but overall I'm thrilled with the space. I'm planning to let the big boys use it as a play room for non-baby toys (LEGO, maybe the train tracks), so they can leave things set up without fear of grabby little hands. And best of all, the boys love it, too!