For his birthday this year we had decided to give him a super hero party (which we held on the weekend) and for his present - a super hero room to go with it. We usually celebrate the kids birthdays on the day of their party rather than making them wait until the actual day if it occurs later in the week as we often plan their party to have something to do with their gifts so everything was planned to come together on the same day.
We have been in this house for 2.5 years now - since Levi was 3, and given his ridiculously high energy levels & various other challenges, his room has certainly seen better days. There were crayon & pen scribbles or paint or stickers on every wall surface, paint spilled on the carpet, and every single piece of furniture was an old hand-me-down. He had one half of an old metal frame bunk bed, a mini-armchair which had gotten ripped, and a massive bookshelf built by my father probably around 20-25 years ago from an old waterbed frame. The bookcase itself was beautiful but was no longer practical for Levi as he tended to just collect junk and it left him without any space for any kind of workspace.
Here's how his room looked before (although we had lowered his bed back to the floor since I took this photo earlier in the year)
so we stripped everything out ready to start over:
See what I mean about the walls??? The first thing was that it HAD to have a new coat of paint. We chose a strong grey colour which would fit in nicely with our theme, and also be easier to keep clean & less likely to show marks.
And while Geoff worked on that (I wasn't too much help there except for all the lower edges lol) I finished off some of the decorative elements I had planned - some wall art and cushions:
When we finally finished & pulled all the tape off the walls we were quite pleased with the massive improvement already! The colour was slightly more blue than I had intended but it is quite pretty - changing from a steel grey to an almost sky blue depending on the angle & light.
At that point we called it a night & went to bed. Yep I forgot to mention - we were doing this whole transformation in 2 days. My parents, and my sister-in-law & brother-in-law Leonie & Nathanael had kindly agreed to take Levi & Finn for a sleepover each so that we could get this whole project done in secret over the two days leading up to Levi's party. It was pretty insane and I don't think we'll be trying that again! We were both absolutely wrecked by the time we were done.... but very happy with the results.
Ok, day 2 was all about furniture assembly & finishing decorating.
Geoff (with the expert help of Jett) assembled the bed and shelving units while I went shopping for party food. (Notice the ironing board in the room where I was also at the same time finishing the 18 superhero capes I sewed for all the kids (plus a few adults!) at Levi's party)
The desk was built by Geoff from scratch earlier in the week & hidden until today. We had looked at several designs for lego tables but wanted something that would be multi-functional and would grow with Levi in its uses. So when we figured out that the width of the small Ikea Trofast storage tubs was the same as the length of the larger size ones, we came up with this design of a desk the size of a small dining table with a big slot cut out of it which would fit various combinations of the small and large tubs. We purchased from Ikea one of each type of storage frame and a stack of the tubs so that he can fill them all with various types of supplies and switch out whatever he wants to use at the time on his desk with the tubs in the storage frames. The smaller tubs which fit on the wall hanging shelf we filled with lego (sorted & labelled by colour of course) and the larger tubs will hold things like his comic books, lego instruction booklets, art supplies etc.
My parents also purchased the little reading chair for him which fit in perfectly with the room. Next we put up the picture rail which will allow us some nice flexibility to switch out the wall art over the years as Levi's tastes change. We also hung the wall storage unit & Geoff attached a bar with some hanging buckets underneath it to hold Levi's pencils & crayons etc. Then Geoff started to hang some of the poster art I had put together for the wall above the desk - its all starting to come together!!!
The other wall art was inspired by a similar themed room I had seen on the internet and my wonderful father-in-law helped with cutting out the timber designs with the jigsaw, then I simply painted them, attached some felt & Geoff helped me screw them to the backboards I had also painted. The result is quite striking & I love how multi-layered & textured they look in person.
I also made 3 cushions to add to his bed - since I wanted the room to be inspired by comic pop art without it looking like a merchandising department had thrown up on the room, we had opted to go with fairly plain bedding which subtly reflected the theme and relied on the extra decorative elements like these cushions.
And the finished room was a big hit! The bed is actually a daybed with massive storage drawers which pulls out to a double bed so it should do Levi right through high school. And most of the room, while matching the theme, is made of fairly neutral base pieces so a quick switch of wall art & decorative items and it can be completely changed to another look in a few years if need be.
Here's the bed side of the room all finished:
And on the other side:
Whew! That was a crazy two days! Levi came home on the Sunday morning to open his presents & we asked him to go put them away in his room and he ran in and was totally shocked & excited! A big thanks to all the family that helped us pull this off. After a failed attempt at a nap for the kids, it was on to the party! More pics of that to come...
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