A Bedroom Makeover For a High School Boy (Young Man, Future President or Young Prince)

For our first post here at Lip Gloss and Ladders, we thought we’d feature one of our most favorite projects that we have ever done together…Helen’s son, Aaron’s bedroom makeover! Bless his heart!

---

PROFILE:

Victim:  Helen’s son, Aaron

Age:  17

Status:  Way too cool for his mom & her friend

General attitude BEFORE makeover:  Meh, whatever.

Likes/Interests:  tennis, xbox, sports, hanging out with friends, avoiding mom like she has the plague, and generally, just being as awesome as possible.

Dislikes:  Homework, cheap clothes

Attitude AFTER the makeover:  ALL smiles! Decided he has the coolest mom and honorary Aunt Heather of ALL time. Loves and adores us and thinks we are the coolest. (Errr, maybe he just thinks that about his room…hard to tell.)

---

*Please note that we took pictures with our cell phones and that at the time of this project (and most others, so far) we didn’t even have a plan to blog. We are just two friends that have the same interest in creativity and design. We are weekend warrior, inappropriate, yet-classy re-purposing divas that are just regular moms that have jobs and mortgages. We were just tickled that we figured out how to take a panoramic shot, for the first time ever, with an iPhone before it was all over!

Originally, Aaron’s room was a blah shade of builder beige/off white. Sad. Helen did snap a “before” shot the morning before our 12 non-stop hours of thrift store power shopping, home improvement stores, Walmart cart rage, laughing, talking, eating and design session project. Helen had it painted with the gorgeous blue that she and Aaron picked out.

(Brand: Olympic  Color: Kaleidoscope)

From there, the inspiration came from what Helen refers to as the “color story” of the room. A brilliant orange color was chosen for contrast and the rest is history. The room just seemed to fall into place.

For us, we can build a whole room around a single item. Inspiration is everywhere. It can come from color, shapes, a piece of furniture or a vase. It can come from the least expected place or item.

As with all the projects that we have done together, we always try to shop from our own houses first. Sometimes we find things that would work better in one space than another. Other times, it is just old items that we know will suffer a curbside death if we don’t repurpose or recycle them in new and fresh ways. This helps us keep the budget down on the overall project. Some things have to be bought new but we try to keep that at a minimum. This is because we are poor we love a challenge. However, according to our tastes, we were both born rich in past lives, apparently.

Out of our duo, Helen is definitely our chief budgeting officer and she always loves laying the rules down for me in this department. And I am our Jack Jane-of-all-trades and master of absolutely none. I love to just dive in a project and “wing” it and sort of figure things out as I go…Helen loves to plan, sketch, budget, pray about it, sing about it, seek counseling about it, measure, re-measure, pray about it some more, think about it, draw another sketch and might measure five hundred one more time before she is really comfortable starting. Let me whip out a can of spray paint–she is so nervous she can hardly talk. I might as well be pointing a loaded gun at her. (Unless of course, she has the spray paint in her master plan)

We have also been known to clear out an entire package of Oreos during a design session too, but I digress.

Helen wanted a space that was age appropriate and masculine but not so masculine that it didn’t look like it was intentional. Y’all know what we are talking about….NOT like this:

We wanted Aaron to feel proud of his space and that it would also be comfortable, livable and one that he’d want to bring his friends over to hang out in. It was important that it reflected him and who he is, what he likes and what suits his personality.

The final result was something that he loved! (Thank goodness!)

The bed, chest, bedside table, and chair were already in the room and we used them, just as they were.

Items we found at a Goodwill or random thrift stores were most of the accessories, the mirror (Patina finish for $6.99) and white floating shelves.

The books that were bought for color came from Dollar Tree. $1 books are a great way to bring that pop of contrasting color into a space.

A few things came from Walmart…like the $20 TV shelf/table. We added wooden legs to “fancy it up.”  The legs for it were purchased unfinished from Lowe’s Home Improvement and were painted black to match the shelf. It went from ordinary to fab in 10 minutes!

Another Walmart find was the wooden crate that the mirror sits on, so that Aaron has a place to check himself out before school in the mornings.

Beside the mirror are the letters, G.O.A.T. (Michael’s for $13) That stands for “the greatest of all time.” Aaron and his friends use that term all the time and Helen wanted to surprise him by adding that in the room. The original plan was to put it above the bed but that was so expected. We opted, instead, to put it beside the mirror so that he could see it while he looks at his own reflection. How powerful is that message?

So, when the letters weren’t put above the bed, we had a blank space on our hands. What in the world were we going to put there??? Two $9 tennis rackets!

Dollar General had baskets and the chevron lamp shade ($10.00) to make that orange element pop.

And the curtains came from Tuesday Morning for $19.99.

The rod was one that Helen had laying around from a while ago and the comforter was one that she bought a long time ago but wasn’t in love with it until now. It all comes together for the total package that makes this space one that Aaron really likes.

---

Heather:  Helen, what was the main reason you wanted to re-do this room for Aaron?

Helen:  I was just about to start the design plan for the guest room when I realized that his room was STILL undecorated.  Who does that?  He lives here 100% of the time, but I opt to decorate a space that is empty 99% of the time? Shameful!  So, I immediately sketched up a design and got to work.

Heather:  Can you tell everyone what our crazy, broke-ass budget was for this project? I would tell them but my subconscious has eliminated the painful memory from my brain.

Helen: The budget was a firm $300 and we spent $308.49.  (A third of the budget was spent on a professional painter.  I’m no longer allowed near a paint brush—painful story)

Heather:  What do you think your main or biggest concern was for this space?

Helen:  It was very challenging because I wanted to balance his personality with my vision of the space.  I love anything and everything CHEVRON, and he just wants to know where the Tom Brady poster will be positioned.

Heather:  Did the room turn out as you had envisioned it or better? What is your favorite part?

Helen:   This is the only start-to-finish project in the whole house so I’m especially proud of it.  It went from blah to BOMB in about 8 hours (shopping included), and it turned out far better than I envisioned.  Heather, you improved the final design with some really creative tricks and suggestions.  I definitely could not have pulled this off without you! The best part was the smile on his face during the reveal …and the CHEVRON lamp of course!

Heather:  Were you at all worried that Aaron wouldn’t like it? Did you care? LOL!

Helen:  Are you kidding me? He is one picky dude, so I really thought he would reject a few of the creative touches in the space. I hid everything so he wouldn’t form opinions about the final project before it was time for the reveal and it worked out great.  #secrets

Heather:  Do you think we scared the men that work at (or shop at) Lowe’s Home Improvement this time? Or do you think we only scared the lady at Goodwill that was also scoping out the mirror we wanted to buy for the space?

Helen:  The Goodwill lady was scared for sure – lol!

Heather:  Did your feet hurt like someone had beaten the bottom of them with a cane at the end of the night, like mine did?

Helen: What I learned is to never ever  shop with you in flip flops.  Biggest mistake ever!  By the last store, I just wanted to crawl on a shelf and give up. It was too much…..

Heather:  Anything else you want to add here, for our first blog post? Other than maybe our mutual apology to everyone that we don’t know what we are doing yet (or really how to even blog) and that this will likely be the case for the first several years posts?

Helen:  You nailed it! Just like all of our design projects so far….we’ll wing it until we figure it out.  No worries.