Boys Airplane Bedroom

I've been wanting to share pictures of my 8 and 4 year-olds' airplane room for a while now.  It never seemed "done" enough or clean enough to photograph.  It also gets a lot of sunshine from a very big window.  That's a wonderful thing for playing and hanging out, but not so good if you're trying to photograph it.

It started with a paint job of a creamy tan and a very wide blue stripe all the way around the room.  I then found some adorable airplane fabric at Wal-mart and made two comforters out of it (I reused their old twin quilts for the inner batting to the new ones to same money.)

I then collected a bunch of artwork and metal airplanes at garage sales.

For the prints below, I bought a cheap calender and simply layed the pictures on a couple sheets of scrapbook paper to make a "reverse" matting. I found some square frames at a garage sale, painted them black and voila, easy, inexpensive art:

All the planes were a few dollars each and we hung them from eye hooks with fishing line so they would like like they are flying (well, except this one-it already had hanging hardware:)

I made simple red valances, trimmed with blue ribbon to keep out of the reach of little ones.  Ideally, I'd like to do drapes, but that will have to wait a few years.

This room didn't have any ceiling light, so my handy dandy husband climbed into the attic and wired the ceiling for a lighted fan (we HAVE to have fans in IL to battle the humidity.   It's a MUST!)  So if we had to have a fan, how about one that says "airplane"?  Isn't it perfect?

One of the boys' dresser is housed in the closet, but the other little guy's needed to be out in the room.  I found this dresser for $5 at a garage sale and thought I'd try a Union Jack design since I've been seeing them across blogland lately.  Well, they're not as easy as they look!  Mine turned out okay, but was harder because I didn't choose a dresser with smooth, flush drawers.  Tape would NOT stick to all the routed edges, so a crisp line wasn't possible.  I had to freehand it, and that's definitely not my forte.  I choose to rough mine up and added a tinted wax to the finish to "antique" it.

I like the punch of pattern and color it gives to the room.  With about $15 in painting supplies plus the $5, it's not bad for $20.

We found two sets of these solid bunkbeds last summer at a garage sale for only $60 each set!  Can you believe it?  I couldn't either!! They were hardly used since they were from this couple's cabin. One set went in here and another set in our guest room.  I just love what you can find at garage sales!

My sister even found them a propeller coat hanger thingy at her garage sales!  This room really came together and leaves a nice amount of space to spread out the lego-building, marble runs or whatever!  It looks all clean and bare, but believe me, it doesn't stay this way long!!

Well, thanks for looking.  They love it and it should grow with them for a while.

Room tally:
Bunkbeds: $60
5 pieces of artwork & frames: $25
3 Metal Planes: $17
Curtains: $5
2 Comforters: $20
Dresser: $20
Propeller Coat Rack: $3
Total for room decor: $150!!!!!
(thank you, garage sales!)



This week I'm participating at:
The Nester
Tea Rose Home
Whatever Goes Wednesday
Hooking up with HoH
Frugal Friday
Feature Yourself Friday