How to upgrade a bedroom:

A couple of months ago, my boys came to me and told me that they were tired of the decor in their bedroom. I decorated it when Kyle was 3 and I was expecting Josh. Now they are almost 8 and 4, and they are tired of "Baby cars and dump trucks". They wanted something much cooler that they wouldn't be embarrassed to show their friends.

I thought that cleaning an rearranging the room would appease them - and it did for a little while, but now they are REALLY ready for a change. This is what the room looked like in March when we rearranged it:
On Monday morning, Joe left for North Carolina and McKayla left for a week-long camp at Clear Creek. I decided that with just me and the boys home, it would be a perfect time to "upgrade" the room. This is what it looked like Monday morning before we started - what a pig pen!

We unloaded all of the stuff out of the room, tore off the red duct tape (an unfortunate decorating idea I used during a time of creative poverty - it was also still during the "Trading Spaces" phase of my life). We also scrubbed the walls and vacuumed the room.

Next, we went shopping. We went to Walmart and found sheets, blankets, and boy-approved posters for the walls.

Then we went to Home Depot and bought some paint and supplies. I also decided to put a casing around the window, and a real chair-rail to replace the duct tape, so we bought some molding, too.

I borrowed my neighbor's nail gun, and pulled out Joe's miter saw and built the chair-rail and window casing. This picture was taken Monday night after it was all caulked and spackled and sanded:

I really liked the blue paint color while we had it - and it matched all of the old bedding, but this time I wanted to go more neutral for the colors. I decided to go with kind of a warm green-gray-tan color called Garden Wall for the bottom of the wall and the trim, and a lighter version of the same color for the top. This is the top half painted the new color: (What is the difference between the old color and the new color, you ask? Not much - it was really hard to see what I was painting, but once it dried it is a little darker, and not as rosy as the last color)

The biggest difference is the room was when I painted the bottom and got rid of the blue. I have to say that I really love the way it turned out -especially since I kind of randomly picked the colors on Monday morning.

Another shot of the room:

While we were upgrading - I thought it was time to get rid of the toddler bed (Josh is almost 5, after all). I found these bunkbeds at Shopko last week on sale, and Tuesday night the boys and I assembled them. This shot was taken about 11:30 p.m. when we finally got it put together.

Kyle chose Bakugan sheets (yeah, I don't know what that is either - some kind of Pokemon-type thing) and Josh picked Transformer sheets and blanket.

Today we loaded the dresser and bookshelves back into the room and put up the cool posters on the wall. I think the room ended up looking great - and the boys LOVE it. They don't have to be embarrased of their baby room anymore!

Tomorrow I need to do a little bit of touch-up on the paint, fix the slat on the blinds, and put up some coat hooks for backpacks and things (under the Star Wars poster), and then I think I am done! I'm exhausted, but it's really great to be almost finished!

By the way, I now have all kinds of really cute "baby car and dump truck" items including: bumper pads, quilt, curtains, crib sheets, twin sheets, twin comforter, and two pictures. If you are interested, or know anyone who is, I would love to give them to a good home. I also have a toddler bed up for grabs - come and get it!

Scroll down to see some more things that our family has been up to since my last post!