Lucas' Room

When we moved in the place was painted a nice and servicable white. Nothing wrong with it. So we moved our furniture in and got on with life. Lucas' room was cute, and had some nice touches, but it was pretty plain, and it was obviously a baby/toddler room.

Well he isn't any more, a baby/toddler that is. He's a little boy. And his room was dumb in comparision to his age. Plus he was still in his crib, which was fine (well he was getting a touch tight in there) until he decided one day recently to go and get his pacifier (he still falls asleep with it, one thing at a time k?). He lacks a nice dismount technique. This meant that he face planted.

Anyway, we decided we would redo it totally, with a sort of nautical theme and with an eye to making something that would last a few years and sound proof his wall that ajoins our neighbors.

In an effort to recycle some furniture and to save some money we decided to repurpose two pieces we already have and use another family piece (more on this in a minute). The first piece is a teak stereo unit dealie. It's cool, you can expand it and contract it to fit your area. We expanded it as far as it can go, sanded it a bit to accept paint, used some angle brackets to fasten it together and painted it cream (well Chris painted it). It hasn't got them yet, but it will soon have doors where the TV used to go to lock the lad out from the G3 we snagged for him from surplus at work. It's also got some curtains covering baskets and a hanging rod for his clothing. The whole point of this is to make it so he can start dressing himself and get more indendant.

The other piece we recycled was an Ikea coffeetable, shelf wall unit thing we had in the kitchen (It's this piece here). It got the same cream paint and is now a storage unit, bench and changing table (the theory being that we won't need it soon since toliet training continues apace). So far he uses it to look out the window at cars.

The third piece is a bed. This bed was bought for my father (it's twin lives in Toronto, my Uncle Malcolm also slept on one) by my grandfather. After my Dad, I slept in it. So 3 generations of Campbell boys (well Campbell and Campbell-Daviault boys) have slept in it now. It was way darker and more masculine than I remembered it (also way nicer) so it got cream paint as well (Chris did most of the furniture painting as well as putting painted stripes on one side of the bed rails).

Three of the walls in the room got a really nice blue paint on them, sort of a dark sky blue. The forth wall is sort of our crowning glory.

Since we moved in the neighboring boarding house has produced a fair amount of noise in our place. Though there have been some serious issues (the guy who's room is next to Lucas' had a girlfriend, he's not blameless, but she is umm.. batshit crazy) most of the problem is just thin walls between our places. Anyway, Christine came up with a really cool way to deal with this. We attached a vertical grid of 1 3/4" by 3/4" pine slats to the drywall. In between these slats, we put Sonopan, a fibreboard soundproofing product. Then to the surface we attached 24" by 24" plywood that has a Maple finish (I coated these with a clear coat). OMG IT'S SO COOL.

Lucas, when he finally got to see the room, was estatic. He jumped up and down yelling "C'est Bleu! C'est Bleu! BRAVO MAMAN ET PAPA!" it was adorable.

Since he's in the big boy bed, he basically doesn't got to sleep very well. Or rather, the same shenanigans that happened in the crib still happen, but over a longer period, with the ability to get out of bed. That said, last night he fell asleep by himself (the wrong way on the bed, but still).

Here are some pictures: Before and After.