In an utterly unsurprising turn of events, a project that was supposed to consist of ripping out carpet and putting down bamboo in Ari’s room has turned into something…bigger.

But first, here’s where we started:

That’s what his room has looked like since we first redid it back when he was twelve. And now he’s just turned NINETEEN.

So I still liked Ari’s room quite a bit. The only real issue with it was that we didn’t leave room for the boards to expand on the headboard, and that was pulling out of the wall in places. And Ari doesn’t have super strong opinions about decorating these days, so he would have been happy to just put everything back in there on the new floor. So, mostly, I just wanted an excuse to change things up. We were also really tired of that brown trim.

Here’s a peak at how things look today:

So far we’ve painted the trim and the walls and put in bamboo flooring. The paint color is Benjamin Moore’s Salamander (which I am loving even though the rest of my family keeps saying, “it’s so dark! you can barely tell it’s green!”) and the bamboo is Eco Forest in mocha from Floor and Decor. It’s the same bamboo we put in Milo and Gus’s room two years ago, and we’re lucky in that they still sell the same color but unlucky in that the price has gone up quite a bit in the past two years. Procrastination doesn’t always pay, kids.

This is kind of a tricky project because Ari doesn’t really live here anymore. Or, rather, he doesn’t always live here, because he just finished his first year of college in Minnesota. Only this year he’s lived here more than we expected, thanks to Covid. But he’s probably/maybe leaving again in September, and then we don’t even know if he’ll be here next summer again because he might well get an internship for a research gig for summer or something.

Meanwhile, Milo (who just turned 17) is still sharing a room with our 14 year old, Gus. Milo did sleep in Ari’s room while Ari was away this past year, but he didn’t move all the way in because we wanted Ari to have his own space when he came home. So. Long term what I’d really like to do is put (at least) a bathroom and some kind of heat/AC in the basement so that Ari can have a bedroom down there and Milo can move in to this room permanently. But $$$. So we’ll see. Milo and Gus do not complain about sharing a room, so I don’t feel too much pressure or rush to change things up.

For now the plan is to decorate this room for Ari, but with broad strokes that will work for Milo, too, if he ends up taking over soon. Fortunately, neither of them is particularly picky about decor. I’m going for modern with hints of vintage, as per usual (or at least usual lately), and right now I’m liking the idea of dark wood against those green walls.

Plans! No more headboard nailed to the wall for one thing. I’m thinking of a platform bed, perhaps of the DIY variety.

I’ve got some Ikea-related plans for a desk, with a DIY component to it. I have so many project ideas! I don’t have time to do them! But more time than usual because we officially cancelled our Michigan trip this summer and are only doing a couple of shorter, closer to home trips.

I’ve gone back and forth on a dresser, but right now I’m thinking of refinishing (again!) the dresser that Dave’s Dad, then Dave, then all of our kids have used at some point. Right now it’s been sitting in our bedroom for forever, ever since we took it out of Abe’s room when we last redecorated it. Here’s what it looked like before we stripped it of its whale pulls to put them in the kids’ bathroom:

So I’ve always thought of it as a little kid’s dresser, but looking at the shape of it today I thought it might be able to grow up a bit and have an art deco-y feel with the right paint job and hardware. We’ll see. Otherwise I’ll probably look for something used and mid-century style.

I’m excited to get moving on it, but first we have a short trip to go on. And then I have to decide if we’re going to plunge forward with this stuff or get Abe’s floors down first. And then ours. And then have NO MORE CARPET ANYWHERE IN MY HOUSE. Which is something I’ve been excited about ever since we moved in.

I’ll do a post about the bamboo at some point, too–probably after we do Abe’s room. We ran into some complications with Ari’s room that made things take a lot longer than we thought they would. Poor Ari’s been sleeping on the basement sofa bed for weeks; he and Dave are upstairs moving his bed back in to his room as we speak!