Want To Know What I Did This Summer?!

I was AWOL from Blog Land between July 17th & August 20th & I did say that I would explain why!! So here goes….

When we moved into our current house in 2004, in spite of having four bedrooms, my boys decided to share a bedroom. This meant we had a designated guest bedroom & the smallest bedroom was my craft (& ironing) space!! Then, in 2007, they decided they’d had enough of each other & we re-jigged the room allocation, giving the boys the two smaller rooms & dividing the second largest into a guest room & craft space for me!

Move forward to 2012 & both boys are now teenagers & no longer require simply ‘bed’ rooms, so much as space for all the tech that takes up so much of their time & quite frankly, too much space in the rest of the house!

So, I had been mulling over in my mind how best to, once again, re-allocate the upstairs room space to best advantage!

Shortly before the start of the school Summer holidays I happened to be in Homebase & spotted some price reductions on paint! Half price 2.5ltr cans reduced from £25.99….& one shade reduced again to £6.49!!! Bargain!….& just the catalyst I needed to get the ‘mulling over’ phase moving forward into action!!

That same day I went home & before it was time to do the afternoon school run, I had taken this room, Nathan’s & the  smallest, from this….

 

 
                                       …to this!

I still cannot believe it took just four hours to completely empty a room, wash down all the paintwork, remove all the football decals & apply a coat of emulsion to almost all four walls!! The next day I applied a second coat & shampooed the carpet & on day three I started moving all of my craft space stuff in!

By the weekend, the boys had broken up from school & Lee kindly fitted a new roller blind & I had a brand new scrap room! I love that I can once again close the door & have my own little sanctuary! No more having to put a hold on creativity because the ‘guest’ portion of the room is in use! That sounds terribly selfish, but it’s also nice not to have the ironing board in my scrap space either!! Just me, my PC & my stash!!

So, still feeling smug about how quickly that all came together, I set about room #2…

This was Alex’s bedroom & the poor boy was quite squashed in! The room itself is actually a decent size, but he has quite an extensive collection of military/science fiction/gaming memorabilia & what you don’t see in this photo is the shelving all along one wall which really ate into the floor space. Added to that was the huge TV his Nanny had passed onto him, so there really was no room to swing a proverbial cat!
  
The process of emptying this room wasn’t quite so straight forward! The TV had to be manhandled by Lee & was taken to the refuse recycling centre, the shelving units are floor to ceiling & finding a temporary home for them was as challenging as boxing up all of the precious items that live on them!! The wardrobe had to take up residence on the landing for the duration, which was fun!  But, that said, within 48 hours the room looked like this & I was soon slapping on the bargain emulsion!

The carpet here was shampooed too & a new blind fitted. Then it was time to retrieve all of Nathans furniture & put together his new room.

This was a bit like doing a Tetris puzzle, moving Nathans furniture around Alex’s, dismantling & reassembling the bed, desk & putting up new shelves! Once his posters were up & his PC/X-Box connected he declared himself more than happy with his new space!

This second room had taken twice as long as the first & here I took a break as Alex & my birthdays were approaching & Mum-In-Law was due for a visit to help celebrate. So poor Nathan had to relinquish his new bedroom for Nanny to sleep in & both boys had to endure sharing a room again…one in total chaos as it still needed to be decorated & reassembled! But at least they had a bed each & one connected X-Box!!

Once the visit was over it was time to turn to room number three! This one was going to be a challenge & had to be done in two halves! Previously the shared guest/scrap room, it looked like this…

Most of this stuff was now in its new location in my scrap room, but I still had the bed & Alex’s other furniture to work around!

I moved everything up to one end & poor Alex had to sleep in amongst it all while I worked on prepping & painting! Then it was repeated at the other end, moving it all once more!

Finally it was done & Alex now has his new bed/sitting room! He now has ample storage/display space, a desk, easy chair & a newer flat screen TV.

The bed linen was another bargain, found in Ikea’s bargain corner…each double set with four oxford pillowcases was just £6.99 & has a lovely soft glazed cotton finish! I’m altering a couple of pillowcases into cushion covers for the easy chair!

I feel that the colour scheme is a little more grown up, although he still has his camouflage bunting & posters!

What really amazes me is that both boys rooms are staying remarkably tidy…I had expected more space to equal more mess, but not so! I still pick up abandoned socks & retrieve empty plates & glasses on a regular basis,  but generally, things are being kept quite neat!  Now if I can just get that working through the rest of the house I’ll be one happy Mum!

So, there you have it! The main reason why I neglected my blog & have had very little scrapping time through the Summer!  I also have an enormous backlog of photo’s to edit & collage for ‘365+1 in 2012’ & hope to have them done & dusted by this coming weekend!

Before I go I have to comment on the return of something that I have missed so much….the new season of Downton Abbey!

After the 2011 Christmas Special I have been counting the days to this new series & so far it does not disappoint! Maggie Smith & Shirley MacLaine have had me laughing out loud & the wedding had me in tears…I love it! Do you? I really must plan a visit to Highclere Castle before too long! It’s really not so very far away from us & I hear that the Christmas Fair held there in December is well worth the trip!

Thank you so much for stopping by & I do hope you’re managing to stay dry now the weather has turned so wet here in the UK!  Only thirteen weeks till Christmas!!  Come back soon!