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ORC: The Big Boy Room – Inspiration {ORC Spring 2016: Week 2}

So last week you saw the glorious 70’s vibe this  big boy room was throwing out when we purchased our home just under two years ago.

We ripped up the rugs and had the floors redone before moving in. And there it sat as a catchall until last Fall when we found out we were expecting #2.

It’s a small room, but rather bright, and the blank wall to the right, opposite the doorway, just seemed perfect for something in the ‘statement wall’ category.

I had it in my head I was going to do a ‘paint by number’ mural for several weeks. Something like these:

via EasterWiki
via Apartment Therapy

This last picture was something I remember seeing on a blog YEARS ago and this is only link I was able to find that sourced the photographer. Apparently this is a room for rent at a camp/retreat facility in Illinois.

Camp Wandawega
But the more I looked into it, and tried to source my own paint by number painting from Ebay (as many sites had suggested) the more I realized I was biting off more than I could chew. And admitting that is a lot for me.  Maybe if this was a first kid project, but definitely not for a mom of a toddler.
So it was back to the drawing board, so to speak. We have a mixture of an outer space/safari animal theme in the nursery (I’ll show you someday, “I pomise”), so I kinda wanted to go a little woodland creature with this one.  William is not quite old enough to have a major opinion on these things, so lucky for Tom and I, we get to make all the decisions ourselves.  Tom voted for an awesome toddler bed, of the car or airplane or something else of the really cool variety, and I kept looking for wall inspiration.
Then I saw this image on CupofJo:

 

And I loved the simplicity of the black and white image, allowing everything else that is kid related to be in-your-face colorful, as it happens to be regardless of how much I protest.  This was a photo they found on Ebay that was blown up and made into a wallpaper. But instead of going through old pictures, it got me thinking…oh…wallpaper murals….
Maybe like this one?
The price was right, the size was right, it had decent reviews…so we purchased it from Anthropologie. Months ago, to be honest.  Yes, we thought we’d actually have this room done by Christmas, hahahahahahaahahaahahaha. But! We have made a ton of progress in the past few weekends thanks to some great grandparents that have been coming over to watch the human tornado while Tom and I work upstairs.  And this weekend, we will attempt to put this bad boy up. Wish us luck!
Week 2 of 6 of One Room Challenge in the books. Week 33 of sobriety!  What will come first, the thrilling conclusion to this bedroom makeover, or the baby!?!?  NOBODY KNOWS!!!!
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ORC: The Big Boy Room – Before {ORC Spring 2016: Week 1}

I’m going to skip all the jokes I could make about taking oh, 14 months off from blogging.  I never really expected to take that long of a break, buuut…I did. I thought about posting a clip of the opening 3 seconds of Sid the Science Kid but realized how lame it is to admit that was the first thing that popped into my head as my welcome back post.  #transformationtoparentcomplete #IusedtobecoolIswear

Reasons why I stopped blogging: my baby became a toddler, I’m expecting #2 in a few short weeks, work seems to be busier than ever, you know, life in general. In short, blogging just didn’t make it on the priority list anymore.

Reason why I’m making myself start again now: as mentioned above, and fairly evident in my instagram feed, baby boy #2 is coming soon. I’m 32 weeks now, and in case anyone remembers slash cares, William was born at 37 weeks. I’m told we should just be ready for anything as far as timing – this one could be earlier, could be later, no one friggin knows.  So – as my tax season winds up we are in overdrive to get William transitioned into his “Big Boy Room” and into a toddler bed ASAP.  And what better timing than to document it all and participate in the internet-famous One Room Challenge! This room is getting updated in a short period of time no matter what, so let’s see if I can eek out 5 more posts on the next 5 Thursdays? Challenge, accepted.

Of course you might also recognize some of the Featured Participants as well. I’ll be linking up on Thursdays (hopefully) to the Guest Participants page. Go check out the other 200+ bloggers that are joining in on the fun (or at least pretend to).  And if you landed here from the ORC main page – kudos to you for clicking through this far. I know I’ve gotta be one of the last thumbnails. That is dedication.
So let’s look at the glorious “before” of this room. I’m going way back to the MLS listing. We bought this house back in June of 2014, and had the rugs ripped up and the floors refinished before we moved in.  After that, this room became a catchall for out grown baby junk and whatever else we didn’t want to look at up until about 3 weeks ago.  Feast your eyes:
The real estate photographers get a lot of credit. I haven’t seen this picture in a long time and this room doesn’t look terrible, just majorly dated.  What you can’t really tell from this picture is:
  1. Those radiators have about 10 layers of paint on them, and are constantly falling away from the           wall. Hours of fun for a curious toddler.
  2. There are about 3 different types of molding in this room. Some clamshell, some colonial, some walls have shoe molding, some don’t. This inconsistency is quite consistent throughout our house, by the way. Drives. Me. Insane.
  3. This room is pretty small. Like 8 x 10 small. Trust me, that bed, if it were still there, is way closer to the doorway in person.
  4. And that doorway is in the left corner of the room (basically where the photo is taken from), however, the door opens TO THE RIGHT. Whyyyyyyyy.
  5. The ceiling boob light is about 11 inches to the right of the center of the ceiling. I repeat. Whyyyyyyyyy.
Good news is 1, 2, 4 and 5 are fixable to a satisfying degree for me. And, even better, they actually are now fixed.

So come back next week to either see if I had this kid super early (dear god let me at least make it to 37 weeks again) or to see what we did next in the room.  #nailbiter

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 6

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