Bringing Home the Boy

Our final weekend of summer. This is a long weekend for us here in Ontario, and kids return to school on Tuesday. My son starts his first year of college on Tuesday ... one day after he returns from two months working in Algonquin Park. Poor kid. It's going to be hard enough on him to move back home with his parents, but to have to start up in college the next day as well? Oh boy.

We're picking him up on Monday. Holiday Monday. The busiest travelling day this side of Christmas! And he works until 5:00 p.m. It's going to be a nice drive up to our beloved park, but the drive home will be insane. We already have an alternate route mapped out, but I know even the backroads will be full of impatient drivers trying to make it back to the city at a decent hour.

While we were on vacation in August (after our camping trip in Algonquin), we worked on our son's bedroom as a surprise for him. He knows we're working on it, but he doesn't know what we're doing. He did choose the paint colours (grey & orange), but that was all the input we asked for. This is what it looked like when he left in June:

He is a collector of many things, and he has many interests. But the last couple of years he has hinted that he would like to empty his room of all this clutter (a common desire here in my home!). We emptied the room to start on the transformation.

First the small cupboard had to be changed. My husband smashed out the framing for the original doorway.

An electrician was called in to fit in a new outlet at the back so that we could plug TV and other devices without having the cords dangling over the wall (as they did before). The electrical cord is hanging there with the outlet attached on the end. This will be fitted onto the back of the cabinet my husband made. My husband framed the new opening with 2x4s again all the way around.

It's a really good-sized cupboard!

Then he built up three separate units out of MDF, which I painted a light grey with bright orange on the back. Cool, right? And now you can also see my lovely paint job of the grey walls. All the trim was painted white again too.

Once all the front trim was in place (covering the rough edges of the MDF), I had to do some touch-up painting to cover all the nail holes. This unit is very secure and fastened onto the 2x4 framing boards that were fit into the opening.

A Friday night trip to IKEA (not something I would recommend this close to back to school...lots of university students/parents picking up stuff for their kids!!), and we picked up a roller blind with black-out backing. This thing really blocks any light coming into the room! 

A couple of nice details like the matte silver light switch and outlet covers we found at Lowe's. I'm sure my son will be glad the ceramic dinosaur light switch cover is gone!

I plan on making his favourite chocolate chip cookies to go in his Tardis cookie jar :)

We're down to the wire now, and my husband put the final molding around the entire unit. I think it looks fantastic! I can't believe the transformation with just this cupboard. My son is going to be so thrilled when he sees this! It's the highlight of the room. We even bought a strip of LED lights that glow different colours with a remote control. We'll stick that down behind the TV ... one of the colours is ORANGE! Yeah!!

Yesterday and today I worked on another small addition. We want to rearrange the furniture a bit, and this will leave him needing a nightstand beside his bed. We can't decide what to get there, so will leave that up to him to choose something on his own. In the meantime, I had this old stool in my garage and painted it up with grey spray paint to put there for now. I forgot to take a "before" shot, but it was the same in quality as this matching stool (below). My great grandfather made both of them :)

Below is the primer coat. I found a can of grey primer spray paint in the basement! I still have to give it a final coat of the actual colour.

You may notice a glaring discrepancy between his bedroom door (which is new) and his closet doors (which are old). 

I love the new door handles :)

We bought new interior doors for our entire house in August too, and got about half of them painted and installed. Then we realized that we needed to stop work on the doors and get cracking on our son's bedroom instead. The bedroom doors were all installed, but the closet doors here are still waiting to be painted and installed. Once this room is back together, we can focus on the door painting again and it will complete the room. 

the closet doors

Also, there's the matter of inside the closet ... care to see?

Yep, loads of carefully organized, but no longer used toys and other boy things. Not something anyone wants to deal with, but once your kid turns 18, I don't think we have the right to purge these treasures for him. Do you? I used to go through my kids' toys all the time and purge since we have limited storage space here. Now, however, we feel we have to ask permission first. I hope a lot of it goes out the door, but I know there are some things too good to lose (Lego, Brio & Playmobil!). It will all have to await its fate until my son settles into his new college routine though. Thankfully, he is staying home as the college he is attending is within walking distance of home ... one reason why we wanted to give him a new room since he won't have the same adventures as my daughter with living away from home for four years.

We still have a few details to work through. A ceiling fan has been chosen, but not yet purchased. It matches the finish of the new doorknobs perfectly! Also I may or may not make some narrow curtain panels to hang on either side of the blind. The closet doors need painting and installing. We also are still looking for bedding. I found some bright orange sheets that match the cupboard paint colour, but am still on the lookout for a new duvet cover in black or grey.

I'll show the final reveal photos when we get everything back in place. Thanks for stopping by today!

Wendy