Renovating a Teen Boy's Bedroom, Part Two

Wednesday I had a blast showing off the results of my teenage son's room renovation. Today is part two of the bedroom renovation blog post. I'll just do a little mop up on the smaller details, and (because I'm a realist) I'll also list the things still left to do (sigh).

Grant's bedroom was actually one of the easier ones to pull together because we had a good start: the narrow-strip oak floor had never (by some miracle) been carpeted over, and the walls, while so grubby they were yellow (ick), they were the original plaster and relatively smooth and undamaged.
We chose Valspar Polished Silver, a nice medium gray, for the walls.

I'm geeked because the chest of drawers wall was pretty economical to put together. The chest of drawers was free, found in the house. I'm glad I had the courage to look past the dirty salmon paint color, the spiders (eek), and the smell. That got spruced up with a quart of Valspar Almost Charcoal, and some low-to-mid price range knobs from Lowe's (and buckets of Lysol solution to get rid of the odor).

The round mirror was also found in the house, leaning up against a wall on the screen porch. The architectural prints were $5 each from The Candy Shoppe on Etsy and just popped into inexpensive discount store frames. I didn't even matte them--it's just white typing paper backing them. The fan I've had for a long time (I'm not sure about you, but the longer you have something the less what you paid for it "counts." Amiright? Right!)


For some reason the wire shelves so popular during the 1950s and 1960s have become ridiculously inflated in their prices, I suppose because now they're hip instead of the hideous thing from grandma's house that nobody wants. This one I snagged for $6 because it's slightly warped on the bottom. The piece of artwork resting on the shelf is a ceramic bisque plaque of a crab that Grant made in art class several years ago. I think it's beautiful! The 'furnished room' sign is a bit of a joke between Grant and me. It's an unsold old stock letterpress sign from a print shop, sold by Salvage Nation on Etsy. It took so long to fix up all the various pieces of furniture in his room, I don't think he thought we'd ever be done and 'furnished'. We also love his vintage version of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." It seems like the right shelf-mate for the crab!

I'm not really a clean desktop; I only play one on TV.

His desk was $48 at a shed sale, and was originally a weird streaky color that was exactly the same as the 'bittersweet' Crayola Crayon. Now, that's not a bad thing in a Crayon, but in a piece of furniture it was a little disturbing. The thanks go to my mom for bringing it home, sanding the heck out of it, and painting it the same Valspar Almost Charcoal as the dresser. She even painting the little routed trim around the desk edge and on top in black to give it a little style.

Detail of the headboard. I'm glad I decided against painting it.

The only other piece of furniture in the room is somewhat of a miracle, and that's the night stand:

The original sight of this object made me scream in disgust. Really.

It's cool, isn't it? It's a little side table with magazine pockets on each side, sort of a colonial revival piece of furniture with an unknown mid-century-ish history. My Mom found it in the well house of her sister's farm. Let me say that again: MY MOM FOUND THIS IN A WELL HOUSE. It was in such a state of mildewed decay that when I first saw it I did actually let out a little scream. It was that bad. My aunt had no idea who it belonged to originally or how it had come to them, or why they'd stuck it in the well house. But she thought it would be okay if mom took a passel of mildewed wood off her hands, so the price was right. I never DREAMED it would end up looking this good. Mom cleaned it off with bleach, sanded off what little finish remained, and spray-painted it satin black. While the finish is far from what was initially intended, I think the black make you "see" the shape better than if it were stained. The top remained in rough shape, so we got a piece of glass to put on the top. Underneath the glass is Grant's football team photo and on top of it is his State Championship medal (a guy's gotta brag!)

I think the room looks great, though in real life it more often features an unmade bed and piles of laundry on the floor. But there are still things left to do:

1. Paint the woodwork. The windows, baseboards, and closet doors are all very overdue for a fresh coat. The current color is not bad, only worn. Here's a view of the double closets:

2. It's amazing to me how many closets there are in a home of this age. But they are all stinky and have never been painted on the inside. I categorize closet renos as separate projects, and two in one room is definitely a separate project. There's even a surprise behind door number 2 for a later post!

3. The desk chair:

I love the mod lines of this chair and how they imitate the groovy square pattern on the comforter. I've got three of them in various states and colors of paint and padding. They were given to me by friend Kristy, and these chairs once surrounded the kitchen table from her growing up years. She gave me her blessing to do what I liked with them; she only wanted a "good home" for the family chairs. I've been blessed with chairs that have already had a good life AND a generous friend! Since I needed desk chairs more than anything, I'm revamping them that way. This one's back has been split at one point, and it's overdue for new seat fabric. It's probably at least a day's project, I imagine.

4. Fill the empty spaces:

It looks a little spare in the room. There's some walls that could use warming up with art and photography. But I'm not the kind of person to just go out and buy a bunch of stuff to fill up bare walls. It needs to be exactly the right thing for the personality of the person living there. And that takes time, serendipity, and creativity. We'll get there eventually, and I enjoy the journey. I have so far!