The Coolest Room in the World By Nancy Kamp

click on all photos to enlarge them

 I couldn't wait for Jill, our beloved older daughter, to head off to college so I could move our CDO into her sister's old room and score a new office for myself.  One year later, the CDO's former room has turned into my new office, while Jill's old bedroom has become the "coolest room in the world," according to every teen who has seen it.

If you or your kid want something different, consider what our CDO put together with a little help from her parents.

Because we're all packrats, the room transformation didn't begin the evening of Jill's departure for OU.  Stuff manipulation and disposal was involved – big time.  And that doesn't count the trips to building supply and other stores for ideas.  However, it wasn't until I was idly leafing through a magazine that I noticed a picture of a  striped bedroom in a magazine and showed it to the CDO.  She fell in love with stripes, and we began to decorate.  

We started by removing as much junk as possible from the room.  On the decorating shows, they take everything out.  We didn't have that luxury.

Light Fixture: The CDO wanted to swap the ceiling fans between her old room and the new one, but none of us felt up to the task so she has accepted the walnut fan blades her sister choose.

Walls:  We got Disney Colors paint at Home Depot.  This stuff comes in wonderful colors that do not cover particularly well.  The initial eight quarts cost over $100.  Also, that blue masking tape that yields no mess lines on TV didn't work really well on our slightly textured walls, making lots of touch ups necessary. 

Floor:  I hate wall-to-wall carpet.  I'm convinced it was part of a builders' post Korean War plot to build cheaper homes.  If you have a pet or children, stuff gets into the fibers, germs build up and the beautiful look of the first few months will never come again.

We (I) decided we would tile the entire house.  After months of dithering and with an unnatural fear of wet saws buzzing in my head, I chose Edge Precizion tile from Lowe's.  You put down the under layer with the help of someone with patience because it curls and must be taped together with special tape that mostly sticks well enough.  You arrange the tiles on the floor, rearrange the tiles so there are no big pieces in heavy traffic areas, cut the necessary small pieces with Edge diamond blades for standard circular and jig saw, and begin to grout. 

The grout comes in a can with a nozzle.  In an ideal world, one would insert the nozzle tip into a grout line, bend the tip slightly and grout smoothly up and down the rows of tile, stopping only to wipe a rare grout dribble or two from the surface of the tile.  I ended up wiping off the excess grout with my finger and scrubbing off not only my grouting mistakes but also enough grout to fill most of an expensive can ($10 or so with tax) of Edge grout.  While the floor looks marvelous, it would look better if we had taken the time and trouble to install quarter round molding.  (When the CDO heads to college, we'll get around to the molding.  And to be honest I'm not sure how well the grout will hold up.  Still, we can do one room at a time and that is important.

Note - After living with Edge floors in two rooms, we have decided we made an expensive mistake.  We found cracks in three of the tiles for no discernable reason.  We will use regular tile for the rest of the house. 

Accessories:  We bought some new stuff on sale and got creative with things we already had.  Tired of living in a warehouse-like atmosphere, the CDO opted for empty space, which doesn't exist in our photos. 

We gave a lot of clothes and stuffed animals away and stored the treasures we couldn't bear to part with, but we didn't want to keep perfectly good mattresses we need to keep for future use in the garage or attic.  These were wrapped with elastic rimmed bottom sheets and stacked to make a princess and the pea bed.  The straight sheets were supposed to turn into curtains via those little ringed clips, however the CDO has decided not to have curtains at this time.  

note dotted sheets covering each mattress in the stack - we put two on the bottom mattress (one going each way↑↓)  to keep it cleaner

The ceiling is entirely the CDO's doing.  It's covered with the nasty popcorn stuff we'll have to scrape off one day, so we allowed the kid to thumbtack her memories on the entire surface.     

 

New room addition: Teen Dream Coasters - Finally, a use for old CDs