A new room for Teenage Son

So, I've recently referred to some 'big organizing project' that J and I were working on over the last couple of weeks. Now that the kids are home, I can reveal what we were really working on...

We surprised Teenage Son with a bedroom.

Up to this point, he has shared a room with Young Son, who is 5 years younger... While sharing a room with a sibling is not the end of the world, listening to the arguing each night about whether the light had to be on or off (along with other various disagreements) was about to drive me off my rocker. It all boiled down to the fact that Teenage Son really needs his own space and I really need my sanity.

So essentially, since we don't have any more bedrooms, we converted half of our garage into a 10 x 12 foot bedroom. The tricky part of it all, was that we needed to do the room in a manner that could be reversed later. This is because it's illegal in our community to convert your garage into living space unless you build a separate garage... However, the setbacks in our backyard eliminate the possibility of building anything there. In addition to all that- you need a permit to build anything. Since we knew that we not going to be granted a permit we needed to find a way to create the space so that it looks like a real room, without actually building any walls.

We were able to accomplish everything by using very tall (8 feet tall by 8 feet long) wardrobe units as side walls. We laid carpet (and carpet pad) and painted the walls. Adding a loft bed with a desk area underneath finishes off the space. We left 5 of the wardrobe units open with shelving, so he has lots of storage as well...

It turned out really well and we are really pleased with it. Here is a glimpse of what it looks like. (Sorry! I took the picture before we cleaned off the desk for the big reveal!)







Here you can see the wardrobe units that create the walls... They don' t quite reach the ceiling, but are tall enough to create the illusion of walls. We painted the two garage walls a silvery-gray color called 'silver screen'.




The best part of the whole project was that we totally surprised Teenage Son. He did not have a clue as to what we had been up to while he was gone, and we had a video camera set up in the room when he saw it for the first time. I sent him to take something out to the garage for me and when he went out there, he discovered a new room!

I was worried that Young Son would be lonely all alone in his room, but so far everyone is happy... Young Son gets to sleep with the light on and is excited about the prospect of having friends over to play in his very own room. Teenage Daughter is happy that she won't have to listen to her brothers arguing over the light while she tries to go to sleep...

And of course, Teenage Son is thrilled as well...