Boys' Room Overhaul, Complete!

Things finally quieted down enough over the last couple of weekends, that I was able to finish completely reorganizing and decluttering the boys' room (before pictures and Round One here).  The first thing I needed to do, was finish some furniture.  My friend Tina and I trekked down to the unfinished furniture store in Scarborough back in early april and completely freighted my car with pieces

Here's Tina, surveying the load, thinking, "If only Volvos were a little boxier."  That's her toy chest strapped to the roof.  It actually made it all the way home!

Now, in an ideal world, I would furnish my house with beautiful antiques and handmade objects d'art, but this is not an ideal world (nor is it, as I like to refer to the blogs I love to hate, Another Perfectly Perfect Day in My Perfect Life), and my budget doesn't extend to (nice) antiques and handcrafted furnishings, so I figure unfinished is the next best thing.  It provides employment for some (marginally) skilled Mainers, makes use of locally abundant materials and does not come from a big box store.  Plus, it gives the boys and me a chance to work on our carpentry skills, like sanding,

and painting.

Actually, their attention span was quite minimal with the sanding, and I only invited Z to help with the second coat.  I painted E and Z's shelf with Milk Paint in Salem and finished M's shelf with Osmo Polyx Oil, which is the finish on our wood floors in the house.

I love, how they turned out, and how they fit in the room.  I wish I'd put them in nine years ago.  I informed the boys that the deal with the shelves was that they cannot leave toys, trinkets, books or novelties on the floor, period.  They're having a hard time adjusting to this dictum (please see the before pictures to get why), but they love running and rolling around in all the clean space.

The shelves fit perfectly under the window, flanking the preexisting red bookshelf.  M immediately turned his into a paper-airplane-making station.

I stayed up till midnight the night before the big birthday party, cleaning M's "office."  This was taken a couple of weeks afterward, after entropy started to set in.  I took no "before" photos--it was so scary, the lens would surely have cracked.

The other side of the closet--I think we need to go through the stuffed animals and get rid of a bunch.  I actually eliminated about half of what we had a couple of years ago, but I swear they reproduce in the closet!

So much space for launching airplanes!

The still tidy books and clothes area.

I also washed the windows and the curtains, evicted spiders and dusted and vacuumed.  I even went through M's drawers a second time, after I noticed him standing before his dresser wailing, "I can't find any shirts I like!"  We got rid of about half again what t-shirts he had left in his drawer after round one.  E and Z still have enough shirts for about six kids, but I'm not quite ready to purge them all.  I read an article about a family that kept only seven each tops and bottoms per season.  I'm not quite ready to go that minimalist--I don't do laundry regularly enough to pull it off anyway.

This was probably the hardest room so far, but I'm so glad it's done, and I'm hoping that the openness will lead to less distraction and delay when the boys get ready for bed or school (it hasn't happened yet, but I can always hope!).

Next on the list is the stairwell, which doesn't sound too bad, until you learn it's also our home library.  I need to purge a major amount of books, to make room for all of the ones heaped in piles here and there, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.  I also want to paint our exterior doors this month...I wonder which (if any) job will win out?