I think we have been working on Angry Kid’s room redecorating for at least two months now.  My goal is to have it done by his 5th birthday.  We still have a month to finish it with this deadline. I’m a complete planner and control freak. So I won’t post pictures of his room until it is completely done. I’ve been giving little tidbits along the way, by showing his closet, and then the vinyl sticker on his wall.

Last month, when we went to The Clash at Clairemont IV, we came home with a signed skateboard deck.  I already had an idea for the deck before we even stood in line to get it signed.  I knew the perfect spot where I wanted to hang the skateboard deck on the wall.  Angry Husband even knew about my plan and agreed with me.  I showed Angry Husband the skateboard deck, and he instantly said, “first thing we do, is to clear coat the board to preserve the autographs”.  I had not even thought of that.  Angry Husband sprayed approximately three coats of clear spray paint on the deck, and let it dry for about a day.

I had ordered a skateboard deck mount from Store Your Board, previously.  This led to an entire argument in our house, because Angry Husband wanted to make something himself.  Seriously, I did not want to wait for the multiple hardware store runs to find the right size of wood/screws/etc. He was not a happy camper, but he installed the mount and deck. Please ignore some of the messy paint on the edges of the closet.  We haven’t done our final touch-ups.
The second project that involved skateboards in Angry Kid’s room, was his shelves.  Last year, ironically at The Clash at Clairemont III, we won two skateboard decks in a raffle. They have been underneath our bed for a year. I knew that they would be way too big for Angry Kid, and one of them was signed.  I knew that somehow, they had a future purpose.

We bought four l-brackets, and used them in mounting the decks for shelves.  We did not want to damage to actual boards, so we had to drill some additional holes in the l-brackets to properly align with the holes on the decks. We mounted the brackets on the wall first, using dry wall anchors, and then the decks were placed on.  I think they are a great addition to this extreme sports room.

I need to find a cover for Angry Kid’s plain duvet still, and some other odds and ends.  I’m still debating on crown molding for the ceiling also. I think this room screams for crown. Angry Husband agrees. Now we just need to find the time to finish it all.

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.