Ari's Room: Messy Before Shots and Plans

Now that we've finally hung up those lights and added Milo and Gus' room to the house tour, it seems only fair that we pay some attention to Ari's room now. Because this is what has been going on in Ari's room for the past several months:

Umm....I really hate painting trim. Can you tell? I pretty much wish we'd never started painting it at this point, but the thought of going back and repainting it all white is the only thing worse than going on and finishing the brown.

Here's what happened: Ari's room was the very first to be painted; I believe we finished it before we moved in. Before, it looked like this:

Not terrible, actually. You can't see it in the picture, but each of the three non-stripey walls was painted in one of the colors from the stripes. So a dark green and a lighter green wall in addition to the beige-y one with the windows. But we told the kids they could pick their own paint colors, and Ari picked Martha Stewart's Kerry Blue Terrier (fairly similar to what he picked out for his old room. Apparently he really likes blue gray). And that's pretty great, because what 11 year old boy doesn't want his room to look like a terrier? The Martha Stewart paint chips come with suggestions for a trim color, and the brown (Brook Trout)  is what Martha thought we should use. Ari was all for it, so we decided to go for it. And we did. For a little while one weekend many months ago. Then we got distracted and never made it back to finish. Bad parents. Poor Ari. So that's where we are now.

And, while we're at it, Ari's whole room could use a little....tweenifying. We bought all of his furniture several years ago, and it's due for some updating. And we've been meaning to get some stuff on his walls for quite awhile, too.

I told him I was going to go take pictures of his room for this post and asked him if it was clean. He assured me that it was. Well...not quite. I briefly contemplated neatening up a little for the pictures, but I was working with precious and limited baby naptime, so I figured I'd continue my embrace of realism and just make the before shots extra before. He's actually a pretty tidy kid, and this is about as messy as his room generally gets.

My kid's kind of weird. Likes skulls and baby doll heads:

Look: Ari's room is one of the ones that came with an updated light fixture:

So where do we go from here? I've spent the past few days tossing ideas out to him to try to get a feel for what he might like. We found three things that my picky son definitively liked.

He's into Japanese Anime and Japan stuff in general these days, so I did an Etsy search and came up with this print that he approved of:

Tokyo Skyline print from Loose Petals

I went ahead and ordered it, though it was relatively expensive ($26 + shipping)....but since we're reusing all the furniture there shouldn't be many big expenses in the room. 

Then we thought of subway maps, and printed out one of the London Underground on cardstock:

And, finally, I showed him some pallet walls and pallet headboards, and he is totally into them now:

Just a Girl's pallet wall

Ari wants a whole wall. Dave is concerned both about how much work that would be and about how much it would tear up the wall should we ever want to take it down again (anyone know anything about that? It seems like you might have to just redo the drywall if you take it down, with so many nail holes). So he wants to do just a headboard (maybe going all the way up to the ceiling, but just as wide as the bed). I'm torn; I agree that the whole wall would look great (Dave does not agree), but I have the same work/wall torn up concerns as Dave. So we'll see. I think I have a ready source of pallets, so, if I'm right, the materials will all be free. Yay free! I'm also thinking of getting him a full size bed to replace the twin. Which would be another expense, but I could sell his twin bed to offset some of the cost. His bed is super squeaky anytime he rolls over, and it kind of drives me crazy; I don't know how he sleeps on it. So either way--wall or headboard--it would serve as a headboard for him; there wouldn't be a separate one like in that picture.

So! Using those things as inspiration pieces, it looks like we're headed for a rustic/industrial-modern vibe. Ari picked it out without even knowing that was a thing. He's got such a natural talent for decorating. I should have known when he was two and used to "decorate" our windowsills endlessly by lining up his Little People on them. He doesn't do that now, though. He decorates with decapitated dolls and grudgingly admits to liking prints of the Tokyo skyline. 

Other ideas:

1. I want to redo the desk something like this I think. Love it:

Simply Klassic Home's Two Toned Dresser

2. I have a big plan for the dresser, but it's a surprise. I hope it looks as good in real life as it does in my head.

3. I think the majority of the books are going to come downstairs to the library and/or out into the hallway (which I've never posted here, but it's really wide and we have some shelves in there). Then we'll move the shelves out of his room or into his closet and bring that red Ikea cabinet (that you can see part of in the closet right now) out into the room somewhere. 

4. New curtains for the windows. Non-striped. I let him pick out that curtain for the closet, not thinking about how the window curtains were already stripey.