A Tiny Bit Of Progress - Is Spring Break Almost Over?

First of all, I have a big recommendation.  Never try to work on a decorating job with your 15 year old son!  He has developed strong opinions which are very....... unstylish.  I mean about picture frames of all things.  I bought some nice frames with mattes for his boxing prints and he thought that was just awful.  They were simple frames too, nothing ornate. One of the large prints he thought would be great to just tack to the wall.  In fact he would have been happier with lots of random posters plastered all over the place.

He originally thought he wanted to keep the sofa black but I just knew when he saw the original fabric, he would be happier...and he was :).  Oh and I forgot about picking out the paint color....he thought it was going to be way too light.  Did he want to hang out in a cave?  Everything seemed like a little battle.  By the way, he loves the color now :).

My excitement over the project quickly turned to frustration.  However, I took a little time out and realized this is a room for him to hang out in.  I wasn't going to be using it.  I had put my foot down on the important things but I could probably move on the little things.  Plus I could save money and use the extra for the other room I will be redoing for my office - score!

I do take pride in what my house looks like though so we did a little compromise.  Instead of just tacking posters and prints to the walls, we are using very discreet, thin brown metal frames to hang the small prints.  This will let the frames disappear into the wall.  And poster frames for any posters.

We had one nice print/poster that was a 16x24 size.  Do you think we could find a standard poster frame in that size?  Of course not.  Since I didn't want to pay for custom framing for a son who didn't even want frames but I also didn't want the print tacked to the wall, we purchased an 18x24 inch poster frame.  I simply decoupaged newspaper to the side edges of the cardboard backing to fill in the gap and give it a fun look.

This is all we've accomplished so far.  Everybody is happy!  We're looking forward to receiving the rest of the prints.

Room Redecorating - Part One

I posted the before picture of my son's gaming room, last week.  Since it was previously my daughter's bedroom it was a nice dusty pink - not too cool for a teenage boy.  The first task we had to complete was too change that wall color.

We did exactly that this past weekend.  The color we chose was a very masculine Sequoia by Martha Stewart.  Both of us love the warm brown.

A small pull out sofa that we wanted to keep in there was covered with a black material.  I had previously re-upholstered it to fit the decor in another daughter's bedroom.  The original, quite vintage, sofa was a brown stripe.  It will go perfectly in the room now. 

I painstakingly took apart all the work I had done before to cover the sofa.  I must have used about a hundred upholstery nails in that thing.  I think the sofa is from the late 70's or early 80's so it is quite old - it used to be my husband's as a teenager.  However, since we are going to have some vintage boxing gloves and photos in there too it should all be good.  I just need to make some new pillows for the back rest.

Here is the first photo to just show the wall color and the sofa without any pillows yet:

NO MORE PINK :)