the boys room – phase 1

I have been dreaming up this shared room for Jasper and Emerson for months now. Never mind that Emerson is only 15 months old and not quite ready for the car bed, or all the lego’s that Jasper leaves lying around. I figure I would just set it up and when E is ready we will move him in.

So over the holiday break I drove up to Ikea by myself (yes! party time) and bought a new bed for Jasper. I was pretty impressed with myself that I got it onto my cart, into my car and fully assembled by myself. (ok, so there were some extremely strong Ikea workers who helped me – the box weighed 106 pounds!)

Jasper loves his new big boy bed and there is an awesome play area underneath.

I found this strange shelf/largest spice rack in the world, in the alley and new I would do something with it. It’s perfect for all of the boy’s tiny toys. Emerson loves taking all the toys off and putting them back on again.

Emerson is set to inherit the car bed from Jasper, who luckily received it from our awesome friend Tiffany!

There are more projects to come – artwork on the walls, a piece of fabric made into a rug and a shelf to get all the stuffed animals out of the way (painted purple if Jasper has his way!) but I just couldn’t resist giving you a sneak peak!

make me pretty – my house!

After spending so much time making things pretty for other people it’s time to do some work on my own house! We have a lot of big plans, including a bathroom renovation, a built in office nook in the basement and moving the boys into a room together! Jasper is now 3 1/2 and moving on up to a big boy bed and Emerson will soon be taking over Jasper’s car bed.

This room will become the boy’s room. It is currently mine and and my husbands, although I have been slowly moving in kids stuff and moving out our stuff which will now be in the room that is currently the guest room. We are basically playing musical rooms – switching three out of four upstairs room around.

The first project for this room is a book shelf I scored at the thrift store for $10. If you are on Pinterest you can’t go a day without seeing one this style. Emerson is obsessed with books so I am going to make him a little reading corner.

The shelf had some stain seeping through the white paint so I decided to bust out the super primer!

This stuff is amazing at covering up any kind of stains on a piece of furniture. If you sand a piece that had been stained the color from the stain wants to seep through. You can put three coats of latex primer on and the stain will still come through. Once coat of Zinsser and your good to go. It is oil based so where a mask. And there is no problem painting latex paint over this oil primer. You just can’t do latex paint over oil paint.

After I painted the shelf my favorite green I used a new-to-me product, Valspar Antiquing Glaze.

I usually use a coat of stain over the paint to give it an antique finish but this product is water based so it’s not stinky. It comes in a pretty small bottle and it was $8 or $9 at Lowes but I maybe used a tablespoon of it for this whole piece. I would usually have distressed the shelf first but Jasper has strong feeling about not “messing up the paint” and since it is going in his room, and I already didn’t paint it his favorite color, purple, I thought I should skip that step!

Here is how it looks in their room. There are going to be many more “boys room” post before the big final reveal, so check back soon!