Behold the before and after

Tada!

Biscuit's room is almost done. When I asked him what kind of decorations he wanted, he said, "I think I'd like firefighters, cowboys, ninja turtles and superheroes."

No problem!

All the big stuff is done. All that's left is details. And although I've always heard that the devil is in the details, we WILL get this done! (And I say that just as much to hold myself to it as to share the thought).

Anyway, not much to say except that here's what we did:

1. Cleaned out and rearranged the attic to accommodate a piece of furniture that we were moving out of Biscuit's new room.
2. Moved out the old furniture, including a cedar chest (the piece for the attic) and an entertainment center.
3. Cleaned the daylights out of the whole room, including window sills and baseboards and dusting the walls with a swiffer mop.
4. Painted the walls.
5. Painted the dresser and bought and installed new knobs.
6. Installed new switch and plug-in plates.
7. Tracked down, bought and hung posters of the boy's favorite things (I figured posters would be an easy thing to swap out as Biscuit's tastes and interests change.).
8. Assembled a set of shelves with cubby holes.
9. Hung a picture taken by one of the photographers at the paper (Soon, there will be a small shelf under the photo that will hold a firetruck.).
10. Moved everything from Biscuit's old room to his new room, including sorting through all his clothes and deciding what goes where, since his new dresser is horizontal, and old dresser was vertical.
11. Created a pretty hefty haul for the donation store.

Projects still in the works:

1. Swapping out of the closets. (My wedding dress, some of mine and Jeff's out-of-season clothes and other items are in the closets - count 'em, TWO - in Biscuit's new room.
2. Painting the nightstand (It does need one more coat, so you won't see it in the pictures below. And it will have a new drawer pull.).
3. Printing pictures of family to put in frames.
4. Waiting for a cowboy print and a U.S. map to arrive in the mail. (When Biscuit saw his mostly completed room, he said, "Mom, this is really cool. Now all we need is the cowboy poster." And crazy me thought I was almost done!)
5. Getting rid of the entertainment center (It's a nice solid wood piece that I bought unfinished. But it's made for old-style square TVs. One of my friends thinks she might be able to turn it into a bookcase, though.)
6. And the most dreaded of all, finding new homes for all the stuff we cleared out of the room to get it ready for Biscuit.

Here are some before and after photos, as well as some details shots. The lighting in the room doesn't make for great photos, but you can get the idea.

The nightstand (which is painted the same red
as the dresser) will be where that TV table is.

The room has one big, long closet with two sets of doors.
When we did a walk-through before we bought the house, I
opened the left doors, Jeff opened the right doors, and he walked
through his side to my side and scared me half to death.

Biscuit seemed to like having
his table in front of the window.

The dresser doesn't look very long from
this angle, but it's actually 48 inches wide.

Pinto and Puppy seem to be adapting well to the move.

When I first found this piece of furniture, I thought about getting the
bigger version that is five cubbyholes high and five cubbyholes wide.
But the more I looked at it, the more overwhelming its size was. I
think the four-by-four is just big enough. I'm sure the contents
will get rearranged and swapped around, but there it is for now.

I wasn't sure if Biscuit's name train was too baby-fied or
not, but I figured I'd put it in and wait to see if he said
anything. He hasn't mentioned it yet, so for now, it stays.

This photo was taken by one of our photographers at the paper. It's
not staged. It's a photo that ran in the paper. I did some editing for
some of the photographer's work, and he wanted to do something for
me in return. I told him no, but he brought in this print for Biscuit. How
could I say no? Plus, we work with some of the best photojournalists in
the country, so I was really pleased to have this photo in Biscuit's room.

These are some of the Little Golden Books from
Jeff's childhood. Biscuit has enjoyed reading them.

The boot is a heavy piece of pottery that I painted. I figured it would fit
the cowboy part of the theme. And since Biscuit loves musical
instruments, I added in some flutes and whistles and things I had.

And speaking of musical instruments, that is a den-den daiko,
or a Japanese pellet drum. You hold the handle between your
hands and roll it back and forth. The little balls on the strings strike
the drum head and make a fun percussion sound. The shells are
ones we've picked up on trips to the beach with Biscuit.

Some things I did for my own amusement ... like putting
a pan flute on the same shelf as a Peter Pan book.

Here are the requested superheroes.

I thought these porcelain knobs were just too cute to pass up. They had three
of them, and that's how many small drawers are on the top of Biscuit's dresser.

Biscuit has all his necessities on the makeshift 
nightstand - a lamp, tissues, a coaster for his water and
a flashlight (which we found under his pillow this
morning, after his first night in his new bedroom).

I don't know those people in the small picture frames on the dresser.
Pretty soon, though, there will be faces of people Biscuit knows and loves.

Making progress

I have so much to write about and no time to write it. I have little notepads lying around my house with reminders of things to share. Hopefully, I'll get to everything eventually!

Jeff and I took this week off work. Our original plan was to take a trip to the beach. We love to go there in October, and with Biscuit starting school next year, this would have been the last October beach trip for, oh, about 13 years! 

But we've done so much traveling this year. And we've spent so much money (new roof, remodeled bathroom, new tires for my car, several trips, plus all the regular stuff), we just decided we'd stay home.

Once we made that decision, we started thinking about all the things we could get done. Our list kept growing and growing and growing. But finally, I told Jeff, "Listen, we need to pick one big project and get it done. Period. If we try to accomplish too much, we'll get overwhelmed and not get anything finished."

Jeff is not a good multi-tasker. He does one thing at a time, and he does it very well. Then he moves on to the next thing. Knowing this about him, I knew that we needed to focus on one thing.

We decided to tackle Biscuit's big-boy room.

When Jeff and I bought our house in 2003, we didn't plan to have kids. We weren't anti-kids, we just hadn't really planned on that as a part of our life together.

Then my brother and his wife had kids. It's all their fault! The more time I spent with them, the more I thought, "Hey, having a child might be fun."

And three years of fertility treatments later, we got Biscuit.

We decided to use the smallest bedroom for the nursery. We figured it would be a cozy space. It was already painted a nice green color that could be gender-neutral (even though I was convinced we were having a boy from about two weeks after I found out I was pregnant).

It's been a nice room for Biscuit. He went from his crib to his toddler bed in that room, and he's had many nice naps and good nights of sleep in there. But I had planned all along that at some point, he would move to the bigger room down the hall.

The stairs go up into a loft area that Jeff commandeered as his movie room. Biscuit's current room is off that loft area. On the opposite side of the loft area, there's a hallway that has a bathroom, the attic access door and the guest bedroom. That's the room that Biscuit will be moving in to. The room is about twice the size of his current room. It has two big closets. And it's closer to the bathroom.

We asked Biscuit about moving in there, and he said it would be fine with him. So that's what Jeff and I have spent our week doing -- decorating Biscuit's big-boy room.

Of course I'll post pictures as soon as we're done, but when Biscuit walked in this evening and saw our progress, he said, "Mom, can I sleep in here tonight?"

I was shocked. I figured there might be some drama about moving to a different bed in a different room. But he seemed really excited about it.

Even though we're not done with the room, we made sure that all his creature comforts were there -- a table by the bed with his lamp, tissues, a coaster for his water and his books. Oh, and of course, Puppy!

He crawled up in that bed like it was any other night, and he's up there right now, just snoozing away. I don't think I've mentioned that the bed is a queen size. That little boy looks lost in it. When I tucked him in, I took two bed pillows, turned them vertically and made a nest for him in the middle.

Here's Biscuit in his big-boy bed. This picture makes me sad and happy, all at the same time. Sad because he's growing up so fast, and happy because he's so adventurous that instead of Jeff and me trying to help him adjust to his new room, he made the first move.