Angry Husband took vacation a few weeks ago to work on Angry Kid’s bedroom makeover.  Maybe it was highly suggested by me, for him to take off.  I just wanted it to be done, and not take six months.  I took a ton of photos during the process, so I’m going to talk about his room makeover in separate posts.  I’ve already done a post about prepping to paint the room.  We paid extra attention this time, and made sure to prep it properly.

Our blank canvas. Notice Angry Kid’s un-assembled bed in the closet area.

We then prepped the paint.  Yes, it is bright orange.  I picked out probably twenty five different variations of orange before I finally decided on Valspar’s Roasted Squash. We purchased it at Lowe’s.

I know. The color is bright. This is the look that we were going for. Angry Kid will be FIVE in May. Perfect for a little boy.  I then had my painter work on the closet.  My painter, is really Angry Husband.  I stood behind him and commented while he painting. This is what a boss does, right? By the way, I didn’t pay him anything to do this.  Because being married to me is quite rewarding already. I pay him with my love.

We waited 24 hours for the paint to dry.  We were anxious to re-assemble Angry Kid’s room. Actually, I was tired of tripping over everything in our house.  Angry Kid wanted to play in his room, also. Originally, Angry Kid’s closet had the Elfa System filling up space.  We decided to be more practical and increase our storage in the closet by adding some Expedit Shelves from IKEA.  We’ve already had great success with the Expedit Shelves in our hallway closet.

You are now probably thinking.  IKEA Expedit shelves do not come like this. How did they make vertical and horizontal Expedit shelves? We took two different types of Expedit shelves, and mounted them together with brackets.  It was super easy. You have to be careful and pre-drill so that you don’t crack the melamine casing.

We also took the time to secure the unit to the wall. This is childproofing 101 people. No matter how old your kid is. Please attach furniture to the wall. This is a no-brainer.  We used L-brackets.

We then re-installed the Elfa System from The Container Store.  We did not our entire original system.  We cut it down to about half of what we had.  We gave the rest of it away to a friend.  We still needed the racks for hanging clothes and putting other items up higher. I’m also giving you a sneak peek of the final room colors.  Yes, we painted the room three different colors.

After assembling the closet back together, we put Angry Kid’s stuff back in.  Most of this is temporary because I need to buy some more bins and labels.  This closet is also about using storage effectively.  We have a very small house and the toys and games need to be accessible for Angry Kid. Also, I don’t want to be stepping on tiny pieces throughout the house.

I can’t wait to show you the final project.  We still have some things on order and other small things to do.  It’s going to be quite awesome.  And we are going for an extreme urban theme, if that helps a little.

We’ve been working on Angry Kid’s room all week.  I posted yesterday about our “cleaning” and staging of Angry Kid’s room.  This was the first time that we’ve carefully planned a makeover project. Usually we are a “fly by the seat of our pants” type family. This isn’t always good in the long run.

When we first moved into the house, we had a ton of projects.  We actually bought this house because 1. It was a one-story, 2. It had a driveway, and 3. It had an awesome garage.  I know that not everyone looks for these particular features in a house, but we did.  We lived in our old house for fourteen months. We thought we had bought our dream house until we saw the neighbors move in and fought the daily traffic to work.

We started with painting our house.  The former owner had mostly white walls, some tacky wallpaper, and a brown walls in the master bedroom. We immediately started painting the house. Well Angry Husband painted, and I picked out the colors. Angry Husband can sometimes get a little carried away, i.e. get sloppy, when painting.  Let’s just say that we had some umm, edging issues with the paint and the ceilings in our house.

We knew that when we started this project, that it was going to be done right, the first time around.  We took care to clean out the room, we put tarps down, and we taped up the edges.  Angry Husband and I marched to the paint store to buy all of our supplies.  We were using three colors for this room makeover, so we had to get everything at once, and we rarely have time off together. Angry Husband usually grabs the standard blue tape, to mask off for painting projects, but this time he grabbed something else.  He grabbed two containers of FrogTape.  He told me that he had a ton of great things about this tape, and he wanted to try it out. Especially, since we are splitting the paint colors on the walls.

When we got home from the paint store (cough, cough Lowe’s), Angry Husband started prepping Angry Kid’s bedroom.  I was so proud of him. He actually used his level when he applied the Frog Tape to the center of the room.  We also taped brown paper underneath the tape at the baseboards.

Room after prepping it.

Closet after prepping. Notice Angry Kid’s bed in closet.

Angry Husband then poured out the paint and begin rolling the paint on. He asked the clerk at the store to put primer into the paint, which made it a little thicker, but definately a good idea.  As soon as I saw the first coat of paint go on, I knew that I had made the right choice in selecting paint colors.  We let the paint dry for a few hours, and then Angry Husband removed the FrogTape in the center of the room. Check out how clean the lines are. We were immediately impressed.

I can’t wait to show you the rest of the room. There’s so many cool things that we have done in this makeover. I want to show you bit by bit.  I will be posting more about it next week. With Angry Husband home this week on vacation, I haven’t had much time to download my pictures, blog, etc. I’m also attending a trade show this weekend in another state.

Disclosure: FrogTape did not sponsor this post, or influence my decision in purchasing or blogging about their product. Angry Husband saw it advertised somewhere.  So at least we know that advertising does work.

If you’ve heard anything about the housing price situation in California, you will understand this.  We bought our house HIGH in 2005, and it’s a little LOW right now.  I know that it will eventually appreciate more, but sigh…I don’t like to look at those numbers. What we do know for certain, is that we are going to stay in our little house for awhile.  We live in a great neighborhood, and really there are no major issues. I would love an extra bedroom or two, and a bigger kitchen.  Since we are staying, I’m in the makeover decorating mood.

I’ve been going through magazines and websites looking for ideas.  I am feeling inspired.  I see all these awesome home and decorating blogs.  They make me think, “hey I can do that too.”  I am always a little conservative on the decorating of our house.  I have that “potential resale” factor in the back of my head.  It doesn’t help that my best friend is a real estate appraiser.  But I want to be a little wild.  I want to let loose.

We are starting with Angry Kid’s room.  I already bought new bedding for his room.  I’m usually a complete snob when it comes to things like that.  All of his bedding has either been from a boutique or Pottery Barn Kids.  I actually bought the bedding from Target. And it’s a bed in a bag! No, you won’t get to see the actually bedding, yet! I don’t want to spoil my “after” pictures. That wouldn’t be fun.

I headed to Lowe’s the other day to check out paint colors.  I got stuck in the “turquoise” section. Seriously, I don’t care of it’s the color of the year. I’m going to paint something turquoise.  But I wasn’t there to look at turquoise. I was there to look for colors for Angry Kid’s room.  I was looking for the perfect orange. Do you know how many oranges there are? Seriously, alot! I’m going to have to get some second and third opinions on these colors.

I’m also stocking up on the decorating magazines. I always get inspired by them.  I get new ideas every time I look at one.  Right now, with working and everything else going on, I am trying to stay at home a little more. I want to be able to be comfortable in my home.  I am always looking around, and getting little idea bubbles popping up. I then see that little devil on my shoulder, Angry Husband. The devil is saying, “ohhh geez Julie, what do you want me to build, construct, or make now?” There is always something.

What inspires you? Is it someone, something, a conversation you’ve overheard?

I’m participating in a  link-up at The Inspired Room. Check out more inspirations on her post.

P.S. Beckie from Infarrantly Creative wanted a preview of the colors for Angry Kid’s room makeover….Beckie the colors are in the first picture!