A Boy's Room Update - Part II

Daniel's room update is complete! Last week's post was part I and included some starting details about what we done in the room so far.  Well, as complete as it's going to get for this post, that is. I've been working on the little details this week, with his help. There is one more thing I'm toying around with trying but if I go for it, that will come later! Here's what we managed to crank out together this week. My apologies for the lackluster photos. It's been so dreary and rainy here that I finally succumbed to letting the photos be what they are...good enough!
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Lego Storage

We had tons of plastic shoe bins containing his legos before and, since they were sorted by project, that meant he had a TON of shoe bins. I found some wicker lidded baskets at TJMaxx that I figured would work well for combining the legos by "type." For instance, all of the vehicles got a bin. Spaceships now share space in a bin (no pun intended), and so on. This freed up lots of space! I also got matching open (larger) baskets that contain extra pieces. We'll add some labels soon but I wanted to be sure we arranged them in a way that makes sense first.

His Glass Collection from Lake Erie Summer Trips

Our kids LOVE to go glass hunting when we go to Erie in the summers. They are actually really good at finding it, too. In fact, we now have a contest every year for the kiddo that collects the most weight in glass. Winner winner chicken dinner gets to pick a restaurant that we'll go out to for...DINNER! Up until now, they've just been collecting it all in random bags and small mason jars. This week, we found large mason jars at Michael's. So, they each got one and now all of their glass has one home.

Shelf and Dresser Displays

Believe it or not, I did get Daniel's input on most of this in terms of what he wanted displayed. I worked on arranging it so that it didn't feel like "clutter" as best I could. He has a dresser top, wall ledges by the bed, a piece my sister built back in a middle school class for me as a gift, and the top of his cube shelves. In addition, the shelves that act as storage under his bed had a little room on which to arrange stuff as well.
My nephew, my sister's younger son, means the world to Daniel as they are close in age. They live too far apart from each other which is probably why Daniel insists on having Cole's picture within view and this is one of his favorites. (And, in the previous picture, the little ornament that hangs from his dresser is of the two of them when I surprised Daniel with a visit to Dallas for his 8th birthday!)

A New Bench Cover

This room update allowed for his bench to remain in the room but it was looking kind of hideous. The buttons were coming off and it looked a little ratty. I purchased a soft piece of fabric that was on the clearance rack at Joann and I added some batting before wrapping the material around and stapling it on. Okay, I have a confession. I had some fabric in my fabric bins that I did staple on but I didn't like the look of it once it was done so THEN I purchase the fabric you see here. But what you see here hasn't actually been stapled on. It looked good enough for some photos just being wrapped around the lid and that means it will probably take me a while to officially attach this piece. And I'm okay with that. I added this pillow cover to give it a feel of an actual bench to sit on.

His Cube Shelves from Ikea

The room update would not be complete without neatening up his books and shelf unit. We tried to de-red-ify the room leaving just a couple of pops for color. So out came his red fabric bins and in went a couple of Ikea wicker baskets.  I did not argue with Daniel when he said he wanted to keep ALLLLLLL of his books.

His Stuffed Animals

A green plastic bin lived here before and with the changes we made in here this week, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Daniel is not ready to part with any of his animals, so I swapped a couple of baskets I had already and gave him this one I used to use for laundry. It could be three times the size to properly hold all of his furry pals, but this will do just fine.

Lighting

We decided a swivel lamp like this one from Amazon would make the most sense for double duty. He can use it to read in bed and he can use it when doing homework. The sports lamp on his dresser also was requested to stay.`
That's about it! It turned out to be a little bit sports, a little bit motivational, a little bit gaming, and a LOT better than it was before!
Oh, and this loft bed also came from Amazon!

Remember the before picture from last week? Here's a quick before and after...After...