#there are just other cool white ikea desks with drawers that i like to look at

[june-again]

the pinterest urge™ to buy 32 strings of fairy lights and a new desk from ikea and $100 worth of stationary ill never use

#even though my current desk is perfect #there are just other cool white ikea desks with drawers that i like to look at #also #the urge to repurpose my closet to a recording studio #im gonna go research that actually #june shines #papeterie #i love that word #j'aime la papeterie #ooohh now i want to get back into learning french #somebody come get er

[imagine-always-and-forever]

Flutterings & Tequila - Part 13

A Klaus Mikaelson Imagine

Pairing: Niklaus Mikaelson x Reader

Summary: you’ve decided to go clubbing with your best friend the last summer before college starts to take your mind off of the Mikaelsons who have invaded your life this summer. Specifically, you’re trying to distract yourself from Niklaus Mikaelson and the flutterings he has caused you. Tequila is your friend tonight.

Part Summary: Clue hunting.

Warnings: typical stuff you’d see in the show

Word count: 3,115

Tags:  elle88531,  violentmommabear42, pisicakawritesshitatfour, a-quarter-horse-called-biscuit, hoeofnjadaka, thegingerthatwaited, despressolattes, aomi-nabi, pie46733, (let me know if you want to be tagged or I missed you out on the tag list!)

Authors note: so I’ve been saying I’d get back to this for ages. I know. But truthfully I hit such a brick wall that writer’s block as a concept had to add another tier to it’s existence just for me. Thankfully, for no clear reason whatsoever, it poofed away as some strong desire to write this again came to me after work. So... tada? Also I am sorry but so so many of you asked to be tagged (I’m very flattered!!!) that I think I’m missing a bunch of people. If I missed you send me a message and I’ll add you to the list. Enjoy 😊

Part 1  |   Part 2  | Part 3  | Part 4  | Part 5  |  Part 6  | Part 7  | Part 8  | Part 9  | Part 10  | Part 11 | Part 12

You’re trembling slightly as you walk down your stairs, breath coming out shakily as you try to calm yourself down. You had 24 hours to find out at least something about what the Mikaelsons were doing here. 24 hours and no clue where to start.

  Through the back window you could see Klaus and Elijah making their way out of the guest house. Their expressions were drawn and Klaus had a small black bag clutched in his hand. Your eyes darted to the door to the house. Were you that stupid?

The fact that your feet were already moving you forward gave you a clear yes, but at least you could report back to Josie that you did, despite her belief, have some sort of self-preservation. It was just a really fucked up kind.

  The door to the guest house opened with ease. Of course the Mikaelsons didn’t think to lock it. What was the point? Who would try to get in to their home without their permission and who would live to tell the tale?

  Well, hopefully you.

The painting supplies were still right where you left them. Your eyes swept across the room in front of you, cataloging what you saw. You’d helped Josie redecorate last summer, but it looked like the Mikaelsons took it upon themselves to do some of their own renovations. It was a little bit embarrassing how little of the place you’d payed attention to when you were here with Klaus.

 They’d rearranged half the furniture for gods sake and you hadn’t noticed at all. With a frown on your face, you examined the new layout of the room. You wondered what prompted the rearrangement. The couches being moved about made sense to give Klaus extra space for his easels. But what was the purpose of switching the office area with the dining room?

  The office, which you were truthfully rather proud of last summer, looked like Elijah’s doing. Two bookcases now sandwiched in the desk against what was supposed to be the accent wall of the room. Not a single bit of the pop of color on the wall was visible now. The imposing set up didn’t even look touched. You could feel your eyebrows tense as they tried to furrow further with your deepened confusion. Dust collected across the books on their shelves. You swiped a finger through it. Coated.

It surprised you that Elijah wasn’t as much of a neat freak about his environment as he was abou his appearance. Though, you suspected if he was he’d have spent most of his millennia+ on earth cleaning up after his siblings. You snorted to yourself. Didn’t he already do that?

A blank space on one of the shelves drew your eye. Amongst a sea of books and paperweights, a patch of dustless real estate on an otherwise packed bookcase stared back at you. If those Nancy Drew books you read as a child had taught you anything, that prominent rectangle of empty space meant that something had been moved. And recently.

That, you smiled to yourself, was a lead.

A scan of the desk and the rest of the shelves confirmed that whatever it was hadn’t simply been reorganized. You pulled open the drawers of the heavy oak desk. Pens, paperclips, highlighters, sticky notes, stapler, hole punch, scissors, and more pens. No. Notebooks, empty folders, the coffee maker’s instructional guide. No. Empty space with a single pen cap rolling around. No.

A dead end.

You got down on your knees. The floor was clean. Under the couches, too. The ottoman with the lift up storage option, empty. The side tables small draw with it’s tendency to stick (a single missing screw from Ikea can really screw your building abilities), empty. You moved to the TV console, frustration building.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

You checked the shelves. You were too short to reach the top ones but the Mikaelsons weren’t. You grabbed a chair and stepped up. It was in vain. Careful to put it back as you’d found it, you moved the chair in defeat. You checked the kitchen. Drawers and cupboard were empty. The fruit salad in the fridge seemed to judge you and you sighed. You didn’t expect it to be in the fridge but it was almost eight at night and you’d torn the downstairs of this house a part.

 The Mikaelsons could be back any minute and you’d found nothing. What if there was nothing? Had you wasted hours of your short time frame on trying to find something that didn’t exist?

It dawned on you that Klaus’s little black bag just might have –

A groan escaped your lips. What a colossal waste of time. Time that to you did not have to waste. You closed the fridge, head coming down to lean on the cool stainless steel door in defeat. Maybe there was a clue you could find back in the main house. Josie’s room might have something that you could give Jess.

With a deep breath, you straightened up. No point in giving up until Jess’s voice was ordering you to kill yourself. Josie would expect nothing less from you, and in truth, so do you.

As you walked through the house to the door you passed by one of the many shelves you checked and just like in one of those long rumored witch’s intuition stories, something pulled your eye to it once again. Something pulled your eye directly to an unassuming wooden framed photo that you didn’t register as new. So, something you’d had to have seen a million times by now, surely. But why then did it feel so very important to look at it?

You walked over, cautious of this intense urge in your blood. It was often hard to tell with magical urges if something was for good intent or bad.

  The photo was in black and white. A little girl sat on a dock, one tooth missing right in the front. A man in an ornate three piece suit that had to predate the Georgian era stood by her, looking out of place but pleased with himself. Beside him was a boy that looked around your age. He was scowling in the photo. In his had he held something tightly, as if he would die if it were ever lost to him. Your eyes scanned the photo back and forth, that feeling still present. What was it? What were you supposed to see?

  The background of the photo was just water. A lake most likely. There were no lakes here. Where were they? Who were they? You leaned in to get a closer look. The photo quality was bad and it wasn’t until you looked hard that you realized it wasn’t a photo at all. A painting. A small, incredibly detailed painting.

  Klaus?

But no. How? You knew this painting wasn’t unfamiliar to you. You also knew that some how you had never noticed it. How could you go so long seeing something so often, convinced it was just a photo of something unimportant?

Almost like magic. Why would anybody spell this little painting with an unnotable spell? More specifically, why did Josie (because it had to be her) cast this spell when you were the only other person than her to see it? You didn’t have guests usually. It was why you had been so surprised when she had announced the renovation of the guest house last summer.

  The moment the skin on your fingers touched the painting’s surface, a vision clear as an actual photo slammed into your mind’s eye. Blinded by the image, nothing existed but it and you were enraptured what you saw.

  It was the exact image that had been painted, but the details were sharp. You could see the threads of the man’s suit. The pours of the little girl. The splintered wood of the old dock. Everything of the moment preserved perfectly in a snapshot.

  There was no sound. You felt nothing from the scene. This was not a vision of the past that let you experience the moment with those in it. You could see the wind sweeping through the girl’s locks but you couldn’t feel a thing. This was the scene of the painter through the painter’s very eyes.

But who’s eyes? And who were these people?

You looked focused on their faces. The little girl’s slightly downturned nose and her rounded jaw clicked in your mind as your eyes rested on her’s. Josie. A young Josie. This made sense. This was a memory Josie had that she wanted to keep private. But why? And why keep the painting if she wanted it secret? The man beside her was probably her father, right? 

As your eyes shifted to his features and they sharpened into view for you, Josie’s body blurred away. No, you realized. That was not Josie’s father. Though you had never met the man or seen his photo before, you knew this was not him. Because this was Elijah Mikaelson.

  At least it made sense now how they knew Josie. Old friends indeed. But what on earth was Elijah doing standing on a dock on some lake with a Josie when she was a child and a boy? As your eyes darted to the boy, the change of the image didn’t surprise you. Josie and Elijah blurred and he came into focus.

  Despite not having known him for as long or studying his face too much, it was clear by his eyes that you were staring at a teenage Jess.

You gasped and were ripped from the image.

  Around you, the guest house came back into view. In your hands, clutched tightly, was the photo. Your heart rate was up and you didn’t know when you had started to breath so quickly or so hard. You blinked your dry eyes. Josie, Jess, and Elijah?

  The sound of wheels pulling up on the gravel drive had your head shooting up. They were back. You didn’t have time to get to the house and though beautiful, Josie’s flower filled garden didn’t actually give you much cover to hide. Without a second thought, you dashed up the stairs.

  The bathroom door was open and from downstairs, it was easy to see. Too obvious someone was here. The bedroom beside it was locked and you didn’t have time to find the spare key somewhere on top of the door. The closet next to it was too small with the vacuum in it. It wouldn’t do. You spun around, unsure how close the Mikaelsons were and if they were listening. 

The other bedrooms had their doors open. Shit. Too suspicious. One door, directly across from the stairs remained. Could you even make it before they opened the door?

You didn’t have a choice. The handle to the room jiggled and the door clicked open. You slipped inside and went to close it as gently as possible when the front door opened. You froze. The door was still a jar. They’d notice if for sure.

“Well that was fun,” Kol sighed and you heard him flop onto the couch.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be fun,” Rebekah huffed and her heels clicked on the floor as she made her way through the house.

  “Drink?” Elijah asked nobody in particular.

“I’m going to bed,” Rebekah said with a short tone and you almost squeaked in fear as you realized she was starting up the stairs.

  “Don’t be so dramatic, sister!” Kol called after her.

  “You’re a reckless idiot without a scrap of self-control,” she seethed back.

“It’s not like he actually liked you,” Kol scoffed.

Something expensive sounding shattered followed by Kol’s laugh.

  “May I remind you that this is not our home?” Elijah’s calm voice of reason came.

  You waited with baited breath for something to happen next. If Kol could get one more quip in to make Rebekah break something else you could use the distraction to close the door properly.  

“What happened?” Klaus said, evidently just entering the house.

  “I’m going to bed,” Rebekah stated and you closed your eyes as a curse tried to come out of your lips.

  “Sister,” Klaus stopped her and his voice was much closer now. He was on the stairs with her, you guessed. “You cannot get angry every time one of your many suitors gets eaten by our brother. You know how he is,” he explained in a hushed voice with a taunt.

Something smashed against the wall again.

“KOL,” Elijah reprimanded.

  A thud sounded against the wall and you reached for the door, ready to close it if another opportunity struck.

  “Enough property damage,” Klaus told his brother.

  “It was her fault anyway. You know it,” Kol argued.

“I was getting him to trust me,” Rebekah’s voice was further away. She must have joined her brothers down stairs again.

“And that involved opening your legs for him, did it?”

You knew it was coming so as Rebekah jumped to attack her brother, you ceased the moment to shut the door. The soft click would be lost to them as they tried to pull their sister and brother apart.

  The room you were in hadn’t been touched since the renovation. You walked over to the window to see if there was any feasible way down.

  “Deal with it,” Klaus’s voice came from just outside the door. 

You whipped around, eyes wide, as you realized they solved the little dispute far faster than you thought they would. You dropped to the ground as you heard Elijah reply to his brother. The door clicked open as you lifted the duvet and scooted yourself as quietly as possible under the bed.

  Luckily, Klaus’s instructions invoked a lot of opinions from his siblings. He stood in the doorway and barked out orders at them. Something else was thrown. As you spelled your breath silent, you spared a thought for all the things you’d have to replace by the time the Mikaelsons moved out.

Klaus shut the door with a harsh thud and switched on the light by the bed. You squeezed your eyes shut at the sheer bad luck you had that this of all the rooms was his.

  Klaus moved around the room, silent except for his steady breathing. Something was placed delicately on a surface in his room. Then, he moved to the window and you heard it slide open. He breathed deeply. The rustling sound of fabric peaked your interest. Something landed on the bed. The unmistakable sound of a zip had a flush come to your face. Oh no.

  Another thing was thrown on the bed. You imagined Klaus’s shirt and jeans piled on his sheets. This was bad. He was going to bed. You were going to be stuck down here for the night.

Klaus opened his door. Huh? And then he left. Wait what?

Cautiously, you lifted the duvet and peeked out. Nothing. You scooted to the other side of the double bed, wincing as the underneath spring of the bed caught your hair and it pulled. The other side confirmed that he had definitely left and shut the door behind him.

  Apparently the plus side of hiding under the bed of a paranoid hybrid with even his siblings at times out to get him was that he kept his room strictly closed off to everyone else.

  You scooted out from under the bed. The window, now open, was your best bet. Who was to say if the path to the door was empty or if you could open the front door without alerting anyone. A well timed cushioning spell would make the rose bush you’d land on hurt a little less. The thorns would still be a bitch though.

  A sudden realization hit you that you forgot the painting at some point in your scooting. You rushed back to the bed and had to scoot back under a bit to reach it. As your hand touched it, you were once again rushed into the snapshot of the scene.

This time you knew you weren’t the painter. You looked down to your right at the top of Josie’s head. To your left was Jess. This was Elijah’s view. Which meant, if you looked straight ahead you’d most likely see –

It wasn’t Klaus.

  You frowned. You were sure it would be Klaus. But you didn’t recognize the man painting on the tiny canvas in front of him with a concentrated look on his face. He had brown thinning hair and a sullen face with cupid bow lips and a nose people would pay good money for. He was an odd man that was handsome and not. You wondered who he was and tried to get the image to focus in further to find some distinguishing feature of some sort.

You were once again ripped back into reality as you registered the sound of footsteps outside the door. The window would have to wait and you dived back down and rolled under the bed, hitting you head as you did so. You bit your lip in pain as the door opened.

Klaus was back.

  You couldn’t say if he was gone long or not as you had no idea how much time you had been lost to that vision. It didn’t seem long, but then again they never did.

  Klaus sighed. The distinct sound of a towel rubbing against hair was the only sound in the room for a while as you put together that he just came from a shower. So, he was probably naked. You bit your lip for a different reason. You listened as Klaus toweled himself dry. He pulled a drawer open and assumingly put on some kind of clothing. You hopped it was at least a pair of underwear.

The bed dipped as Klaus sat. The lamp was clicked off. Shuffling from above. The bed dipped in different places as Klaus got comfortable. As luck was not your fan, he settled directly above you. You didn’t dare scoot one way or another. He’d surely hear it.

So you were spending the night here then. Great.

Klaus fidgeted above you again, having the gal to not find a comfortable position for the night. You stared at the springs and mattress centimeters from your face in annoyance. To be fair, this could have been the comfiest floor in the world and you still wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Not with Klaus above you and the rest of the Mikaelsons scattered about the house. No hope of escape until morning.

  A sharp inhale cut through your self pity. Another one. Was he…?

#Klaus Mikaelson #klaus mikaelson imagine #klaus mikealson x reader #the originals imagine #flutterings & tequila #part 13 #niklaus mikaelson #niklaus mikaelson imagine #niklaus mikaelson x reader #oh my god it's been over a year since the last part #damn writers block and inspiration really be like that #idk why i'm back at it either but let's hope it lasts i'm having fun

[nureyevapologist]

Hiyaaa, if you want an aftg prom still, pls consider: Neil coming home to his and andrew's apartment with one of his newest recruits, and they boy is beaten and battered and neil's first instict was to take care of him because no one ever took care of neil, and andrew's reaction to this! ❤

thanks for this!! i might have veered from the specifics a little and this is like, 70% a character study of neil and 30% Andreil Content but i hope this is okay!!

Neil Josten felt that he owed a lot to the idea of coincidences.

Coincidence was Neil taking an uncalculated risk on the Millport Dingoes the very same year that Riko Moriyama finally snapped and took the bones in Kevin Day’s hand with him. Coincidence was falling into the same orbit as the man who had watched Neil’s father slice a man like lunchmeat and coincidence was him being so single-mindedly focused on Exy that he didn’t notice Neil’s terrible dye job or the white ring around his contact lenses. Coincidence was Andrew Minyard being the single-most observant person Neil has ever met, and coincidence was Neil being forced into his field of vision.

Coincidence was also Neil here and now, stopping off at a convenience store to grab a packet of cigarettes and accidentally witnessing his potential new recruit fall victim to a heavy, parental hand. 

It had only taken one video on a grainy, digital camera to show Neil that this kid had the raw potential to be one of the greatest backliners Palmetto State would ever see. Not fifteen minutes into the footage had Neil shoved aside his other folders and said to Wymack, one thumb jutted at the screen, we have to have him. Wymack had shrugged, assented with a nonchalant you’re the captain, captain and the very next week saw the two of them riding out to Georgia in Neil’s shiny new Lexus.

(“Having a Pro Athlete for a boyfriend sure does have its perks, huh kiddo?” had almost gotten Wymack elbowed bodily out of a moving vehicle.

“Above your paygrade” in a smooth, Andrew-esque tone had Coach laughing for the next ten minutes of the drive, safe and unmoving in the passenger seat.)

So they had approached the boy, Josh, after hanging back in the shadows to watch his high school team completely demolish their opponents. Wymack had loitered, no doubt trying to catch the name of the opposition’s only saving grace, a furious offensive dealer, and Neil had attempted to look cool and friendly as opposed to cold and menacing.

Naturally, the kid told Neil to fuck off four times before Neil backed him into a corner and told him to stop squandering his future by being unnecessarily abrasive. There was something in the complicated ice of this boy’s eyes that Neil connected with, an innate fear that ducked for cover behind aggression and hunched shoulders. One minute he stood every inch his five feet and ten inches and the next, body folded in on itself like he was willing it to disappear, he looked to stand no taller than Neil himself.

“I don’t know what your deal is,” Neil had said, arms tucked across his chest with all of his patchwork scars on show, “but I come from Palmetto State. I’m not here to judge, or pry, or fix. I don’t give a shit about your tragic backstory, I give a shit about the way you single-handedly held up your team’s defense line and I give a shit about putting you on an NCAA Class I Exy team. If you can get over yourself for five minutes, I suggest you sign first and cry later”

Every fibre in this kid’s body twitched like he wanted to run and Neil was hit, not for the first time, with jarring memory of himself in this position, shadows of a dark locker room curling in around his ankles, Wymack promising a future he’d never stayed still long enough to know he wanted. Sentiment was lost on Neil, most of the time. Still, if his family of Foxes had taught him anything, it was that sometimes you had to save people despite them not wanting to be saved. At this point, that may as well be the Palmetto State Motto. Neil had given the kid a few hours to think on it. Go home, talk to whoever you need to talk to, think about it. Just remember that we did not drive out here for a no.

Wymack had, of course, grumbled about having to spend a few hours sweating my damn ass off in the pleasure of your company but had mellowed somewhat when Neil had taken him for a suitably greasy dinner and showed him how to use his new phone to FaceTime Dan. He had allowed himself a few moments to enjoy the scene; Wymack, his face far too close to the screen, cursing Dan out for not texting him all week because saying I miss you is too overrated. Dan, a pixelated blur of joy and exuberance, showing her father every single corner of her new apartment and zooming in on one Matt Boyd, tangled helplessly in the middle of an Ikea side table.

With Wymack occupied, Neil had called Andrew, who answered on the very last ring because he was a certified asshole at the best of times. “Am I to assume you will be elsewhere when I get to the dorms?”

Andrew always makes him feel so known. “I managed to pick another stubborn one”

“Yes,” Andrew says, his voice a slow rumble over the familiar, quiet growl of the Maserati, “because you were so quick to acquiesce”

“I might have been running to grab a pen,” Neil replies. Andrew doesn’t laugh, but there’s a puff of air that Neil recognises as amusement, and his own mouth curls. “I think I sold him, though. A few hours and I might finally have secured a backliner”

“You should hope so,” and then there’s a beat of silence and the tell-tale flick of a lighter, “because I refuse to listen to you whine about it all weekend”

“So you admit that you do listen, when I talk?”

“Absolutely not” and when the silence stretches for a beat too long, Neil lifts the phone from his ear and realises Andrew has disconnected the call. Typical Andrew, but now Neil’s fingers twitch to hold a cigarette and he distinctly remembers leaving them behind at the behest of Wymack’s disapproving frown. Beneath his thighs the sticky vinyl booth creaks in protest when he shifts his weight and he waves a round-about hand at Wymack before ducking out of the diner, knowing that Wymack will see him cross the road toward the convenience store and put two and two together.

It says a lot for how far he has allowed himself to sink into safety and familiarity and family that he doesn’t immediately notice the shouting. He’s caught up in realising his ID is somewhere in the glove compartment of his car and wondering if his sharp scars and sharper expression will dissuade the cashier from asking questions. Behind the front counter is a door, all peeling red paint and a half-hearted Staff Only sign, and the slight space between the door and the frame is the source of the noise. Neil has no interest in interfering. Neil has no interest in even listening to some inane disagreement between cashier and colleague, and is considering returning to the diner empty handed when he hears a sharp crack, followed by a sharper, you are never leaving me, Joshua, not ever and the unmistakeable sound of hands pummelling flesh. Something in Neil twitches to intervene but he isn’t stupid enough to walk into a small room with flying fists so, in a bid of panic, he thumps the bell by the cash drawer once, twice, three times.

A man appears from the back, face flushed the red of barely-swallowed anger, eyes a little wild and searching. Neil smiles something icy and the man is stupid enough to misread it. “Sorry ‘bout that, had’ta catch up on some paperwork in the back. What can I do ya for?”

There’s a moment where everything slows down and Neil files away details like his life depends on it. Blood, smeared across the knuckles of one large, meaty hand. A row of scratches, three raised and red, sit tucked against his chunky neck in an indication that someone had raised a hand to defend themselves. A gold ring, thick and faded, shaped to spell out DAD. Neil doesn’t know what makes him say it, but he opens his mouth to ask for a packet of Camel Blue and what comes out is “someone round the back is casing the place, you might want to check that out”

A self-righteous rage takes over the man’s expression, clouding his eyes and the twist of his mouth and he claps Neil on the shoulder as he passes on his way to the door. Men like him, Neil thinks, are far too predictable for their own good. Something like a memory tugs at his subconscious; Neil at age sixteen, dropping a similar line, waiting for the all clear to stuff his pockets full of food and hightail it out of there before anyone noticed. That, Neil thinks, was a far more sensible plan than whatever this was. He rounds the corner of the cashier desk, nudges the back door open with the flat of his hand and comes face to face with the cowering, crumpled body of his newest recruit.

The kid, Josh, is folded in on himself in the far corner of this office, schoolbag tossed a few paces away, face hidden in his hands. At Neil’s entrance he starts so hard Neil almost feels it like a physical thing and then his face does something complicated when he realises it isn’t his father; relief warring with shame warring with anger warring with hope. One of his eyes is beginning to blacken and there’s blood pouring from a cut in his eyebrow – the ring, the fucking ring – and from one side of a crooked nose. His wrist doesn’t look particularly healthy and the way he holds himself tells Neil that this is not a one off occurrence.

“What do you want?” asks Josh, and Neil has no fucking idea. There are scars on his skin from the hands of his father and the hands of his mother and there were long years of his life where he was so accustomed to being beaten within an inch of his life that he never stopped to think that maybe, he didn’t deserve it and maybe, it wasn’t normal and maybe, someone should have helped him. How many teachers saw his black eyes, his split lips, his bruised arms, and how many of them said nothing. How many strangers saw his mother grip his wrist so tightly that it popped, pulling him into a car or a hotel or an alley, how many men saw his father pummel him like a punch bag?

Without thinking about it too much, Neil holds out a hand. “I want to help you. I want you to come with me”

Josh scoffs, gesturing loosely to his face. “This is nothing compared to what he’ll do if he comes in here and I’m gone”

Neil frowns. “Look at me,” and he points to his own scarred face with equally scarred hands, “look at my face and tell me you don’t think I’ve survived worse than your piece of shit father. Come with me, now, and don’t ever come back. Let us help you”

And there it is again, the flurry of anger-fear-shame-hope. “Why?”

“You’re a damn good backliner,” Neil tells him simply, “and if you let that pathetic excuse of a man beat you any harder you won’t be, anymore”

Hesitation twists his features into something ugly. Neil knows that he has minutes, maybe seconds until the man outside realises he’s been set up. If Neil has to pick saving himself over saving this kid, he’ll probably save himself, but Josh drags himself to his feet and looks Neil squarely in the face. “If I do this…he will come looking for me”

“And he will find an entire team of angry, troubled Exy players who know their way around a racquet” Neil replies. ���I can protect you, but we have to leave. Right now”

His jaw goes tight but he nods, once. Neil nods back and together they make their way toward the front of the store, Neil pushing ahead, body strung-tight with focus. Outside he nudges Josh ahead of him, watches him adjust his gait around a lopsided limp, reels in his anger for another day.

They reach the Lexus across the street and a voice from behind calls “Joshua, get back here this goddamn instant.”

Three things happen.

Josh, in a bout of incredible bravery, flips his father the middle finger and falls over himself to clamber into the back seat of Neil’s car. The father, in a bout of incredible anger, starts for Neil like he means to snap his head from his body. Wymack, in a bout of incredible exhaustion at the familiarity of a situation such as this, appears at Neil’s right shoulder and swings a right hook up and under the man’s jaw.

It sends the man on his ass and in a split-second shared glance, Neil and Wymack make the mutual decision to get the fuck out of there.

Over the course of their drive back to Palmetto, Neil explains the situation with their new backliner, Wymack assures Josh that he will be resolutely protected, and Josh leaks blood all in the fancy seats of Neil’s car. When it doesn’t seem like it will stop, Neil shucks off his hoodie and throws it at the kid, telling him to hold it fast to the wound – after a brief, whispered argument, Neil pulls over and hands Wymack the keys and throws himself into the backseat to try and assess the damage. The ring hadn’t cut his eyebrow so much as it had gouged out a chunk of skin and his nose and lip are bust but mostly dried up. There’s a patch of blood at his side, seeping through his white t-shirt, and he waves that away as split stitches. From what, Neil doesn’t ask. He tries to staunch the bleeding but succeeds only in covering his own fingers in the blood, and in the end Wymack has to drive them straight to Abby’s house.

“Abby is our team nurse,” Neil explains, while Wymack tries to parallel park a Lexus under a blanket of colourful curses, “she patches up sprained ankles but she also patched up every wound visible on my skin, so you can trust her. I can stay, if you want, or I can leave you in her capable hands while I go back to campus and make preparations for you. There’s a spare bed in one of the freshman dorm rooms, or you can stay with Abby, or you can sleep on my sofa. Whatever you need”

Josh tucks his arms around himself, bravado stripped for the day. Neil assumes it will come back, that things will be difficult, that the kid’s attitude will fling itself all over the place, but for now he’s looking at Neil like Neil just saved his life and Neil thinks he just might have.

“You can go,” Josh says, “I have more shit under here I don’t wanna flash to anyone but a nurse, right now. Uh, I don’t…maybe I can stay on your sofa? For a bit. I don’t…”

“Hey,” Neil interrupts, “you don’t have to explain. Sofa it is. Though, I should tell you, my…my boyfriend is visiting right now, and he isn’t the friendliest person you’ll ever meet-”

“Understatement,” Wymack interrupts, “fucking understatement”

“-but,” and Neil flips off Wymack, “as long as you don’t give him any reason to distrust you, you’ll be safe”

He watches the kid for a minute, waiting for something. Protest, anger, homophobia, acceptance. Instead he shrugs, tired, overwhelmed, and climbs out of the car. Wymack follows him out, with a parting jab about Neil’s use of the term boyfriend, and then Neil is left to drive back to campus alone.

Maybe it should be embarrassing that the sight of the Maserati fills Neil with a fuzzy sort of warmth but this past half-a-year has begrudgingly taught him that distance makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever, and that he should allow himself to recognise that he misses Andrew and likes it when he comes home.

Or maybe Bee had taught him that, but he wasn’t about to admit it to Andrew.

The man in question is leaning up against the hood of his car, sleek and sharp in his black jeans and leather jacket, one booted-foot propped against the license plate, a cigarette between his lips. He’s gotten broader, since Neil last saw him, bulkier in the arms and shoulders and if Andrew is feeling up to it, Neil wants to relearn the shape of him with his fingers, maybe even his mouth.

Andrew doesn’t look up when the Lexus pulls in, feigning a nonchalance the set of his jaw doesn’t quite convey, but he does look up when Neil steps out of the car and his face transitions from smooth to thunder so fast it gives Neil whiplash.

“What happened?”

Neil blinks and Andrew’s hands are on him, fingers tilting his jaw this way and that, skimming down the sides of his body, eyes roaming for injury. Neil belatedly realises that he has Josh’s blood on his hands, a little on his shirt and he curves his own fingers around Andrew’s wrists, meets his eye with a calm stare. “It isn’t mine”

“That,” Andrew says, shoulders settling away from tension, “is not as reassuring as you seem to think it is”

Neil rolls his eyes. “Had some trouble with the new recruit. He’ll be staying with us”

Andrew arches a pale eyebrow, studying the blood on Neil’s fingers with a calculated disinterest. Neil huffs. “His father was beating the shit out of him”

“Where is he now?”

“Abby’s”

Andrew studies him for a long moment. Then, “I thought taking in strays was my thing”

“Well,” and Neil smooths his thumbs down over the fine bones of Andrew’s wrists, “someone had to pick up the slack. I couldn’t leave him there. So many people must have seen my mother backhand me and no one ever stepped in. How could I-”

“Stop it,” Andrew says, and Neil stops. “You cannot take responsibility for every single person in the world. It will never make your mother un-hit you”

Neil flinches, but he knows Andrew is right. Still, “I can help him. I can help this one. I want to”

“Alright”

“Yeah?”

Andrew gives him a look. “What, were you asking my permission? Are we adopting this child together?”

Neil laughs, a new thing, tipping his head back, teeth slipping past his lips. “You don’t think we’d make good parents?”

Andrew steps close enough that one of his boots rests between Neil’s two sneakers, their hands still clasped between them becoming squashed between their chests. “I would be a textbook parent. You would be a nightmare”

“I resent that,” Neil tells him “We’re never having kids”

“Obviously”

“Cats, maybe”

Andrew blinks. “Cats? You’ve thought about cats?”

Neil shrugs, once, but can’t fight the smile spilling back onto his face. “We’re getting cats. You said yourself that you like taking in strays”

“No,” Andrew says, firm. “I do not like it. The last one I took in continues to test my patience, so I will not have another”

“I’ve been testing your patience for four years and you’ve yet to get rid of me” Neil reminds him, “I think you’re getting soft”

“I think I am getting back in my car and leaving you here” Andrew replies, allowing it when Neil’s hands wiggle up between their bodies to frame his face.

“I think you’re going to help me make use of my empty dorm room before a freshman backliner moves in onto my sofa”

Andrew doesn’t respond to this either way but he allows it when Neil stretches to press a small kiss to the corner of his mouth and he allows it when Neil takes him by the fingers and leads him into Fox Tower, and he certainly allows it when Neil peels him out of his leather jacket before the door is even closed behind them.

(Later, when Josh announces his presence with a tentative knock at the door, Andrew answers it. Neil watches them size one another up and then Andrew reaches up into his armband for a knife. “Use this on anyone other than your father,” he says, “and I will use it to remove your hands”

If the expression on his face is anything to go by, Josh has no idea what he’s agreeing to in taking that knife, but he does it anyway. Neil has to hide his smile in the collar of his newly-acquired leather jacket.)

#answered #prompt fills #andreil #fic

[a-splash-of-stucky]

how long will i love you?

Pairings: Artist!Steve Rogers x Artist!Reader

Summary: Nothing lasts forever, except, perhaps, your love for him.

Warnings: So much angst. Major character death/grieving. Language.

Notes: Written for @barnesrogersvstheworld’s writing challenge using the prompt ‘paint tubes’. Kisses are featured, though how ‘significant’ they are is up for debate (sorry y’all, I tried)

Some inspiration taken from the ‘Over and Over Again’ music video, and title is from ‘How Long Will I Love You’ by Ellie Goulding. Sorry in advance for the heartbreak, but on a separate note: I’m really proud of how this turned out.

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“You need to clean it out,” Wanda says, for the dozenth time in probably as many minutes.

“I don’t need to do anything—”

“It’ll be cathartic,” she says, “You’ll find closure, you’ll...I dunno, you’ll find those pizza socks that you’ve lost, maybe?”

“I do miss those socks,” you say forlornly.

“So, you’ll clean it out?” she presses.

“I’ll...think about it.”

—

The art studio is exactly how you’d left it, albeit with a thin film of dust clinging to every surface. That is to be expected, given that you haven’t set foot in this room for over two years. As you step into it now, you feel as if you’ve just gone back in time, to a point in your life when things were brighter, easier.

You sigh heavily as you flick on the light switch.

It’s a small, square room, with an enormous corner window. When the blinds are drawn open, sunlight floods into the place, making the studio seem much bigger than it really is. You cross the room quickly to do just that.

You rest your back against the cool glass of the window as you carefully survey the place. The room is in a state of organised chaos, with some semblance of order built into the messiness. An eclectic collection of DIY shelves and IKEA storage units housing your art equipment line the wall beside the door. Some of the drawers are practically overflowing with their contents.

A large desk has been pushed against the wall to your left and on it, there are glass mason jars with paint brushes still inside them. You know that if you were to open the drawers of that desk, you’d find all of your old sketchbooks and a few unfinished pieces of art. Larger equipment like tripods, a drying rack and easels are arranged against the wall opposite the desk. The window takes up most of the fourth wall, so you’ve put no furniture in front of it, in order to not block out the light.

It’s bittersweet, being in here.

You slowly make a circuit around the room, trailing your fingers over the paint-stained and pencil-marked surfaces. His presence fills the room, despite the fact that he has not been in here for the last two years, either. The stuff in here is as much tied to him as it is to you; both of you shared this studio, both of you used these brushes and those easels, both of you used to blast your music as you painted into the wee hours of the night.

It’s difficult enough, having to live in the home that you once shared with him without having to come in here and be harshly reminded of his absence. Nearly eighteen months ago, you moved into a studio-office downtown, so that you could work in a space whose every square inch had not been infused with the essence of his being.

You remember the times when you would open the door to this studio and see him hunched over the desk, new splatters of paint decorating his apron. His tongue would be sticking out of the corner of his mouth and his brows would be furrowed in concentration as he worked on his latest piece. Music would fill the air — something mellow and old-school, something that reminded you of jazz bars and speakeasies.

You’re torn between the urge to preserve the room exactly as it is, and clearing everything out, giving you the opportunity to start afresh.

As you perch yourself on one of the stools, your eyes land on a cardboard box balancing precariously on top of one of the smaller drawer units. You dimly remember dumping it there ages ago, fully intending on coming back to it in a couple of days’ time.

Funny how two days can so suddenly turn into two years.

You cross the room to examine it more closely. The box is exactly how you remember it, black, with the brand name written across the front in simple, clean white text. Hesitantly, like you’re afraid that something might leap out and bite you, you lift up the lid with a single index finger. The paint tubes are still inside, untouched — pristine as the day they came. There are ten of them in all.

In the grief and darkness of the last two years, you’d forgotten about them.

He would not want them to go to waste.

In a sudden burst of motivation, you drag an easel, a small table and a stool over to the window, before rooting around the storage units for a pre-stretched canvas. You grab all the utensils you think you’ll need and don your old, paint-stained apron before sitting down.

You have not put a brush to canvas for a long time, but perhaps, it is time to revisit your roots.

—

You scrub the back of your hand over your face, groaning in frustration when you realise that you’ve probably just smeared blue acrylic across your cheek.

It’s a Friday night and, while most people are ushering in the weekend with booze and parties, you’re stuck in the art department, frantically trying to finish your coursework piece in time for the Monday morning submission deadline. You’re lowkey hating your past-self for being so ambitious and/or being really shitty at time-management, but what’s done is done and your present-self must now deal with the consequences of your own incompetence.

It is at this precise moment that the door to the art studio creaks open and a broad-shouldered, blonde-haired hunk of a man walks in. It takes a moment for you to clock him as Steve Rogers, otherwise known as the guy that you’ve been crushing on for the better part of the last academic year.

He’s wearing a light-grey t-shirt, dark blue jeans and a black bomber that hugs him just right. He’s got a canvas backpack slung casually over one shoulder, and big, square-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He does a double-take when he notices you, like he’s surprised to find anyone else here, on a Friday night.

“Uh...hey,” he says, waving a hand in greeting.

“Hey yourself,” you reply, straightening up in your seat.

Of all the times for your crush to see you, it had to be when you were wearing your least-flattering pair of sweats and had paint smeared across your cheek, right?

“You’re, uh...you’re Y/N, right?” he asks, as he slowly walks over to you.

“Yep, that’s me. And you’re Steve?”

“Steve Rogers, that’s me,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He stops beside your table and gives a cursory glance over the mess you’ve got spread across it.

“Coursework?” he guesses, jerking his chin towards your painting-in-progress.

“Yeah,” you sigh.

“Same, I got some things I needed to finish up before I can hand it in,” Steve says. “I gotta admit though, I didn’t think anyone would be in here this late.”

You frown in confusion. “It’s not that late, it’s only like...oh,” you murmur, as you look at the clock hanging over the door.

Steve chuckles. “What time did you think it was?”

“Like...maybe almost nine o’clock?”

“Yeah, and then somehow, you find out that it’s five past midnight, huh?” Steve says, nodding sagely. “Yeah, I’ve been there before.”

You smile wryly. “The struggles of being a student artist, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Steve says, shooting you one of those disarming, carefree grins. “But hey—at least you’re not alone anymore, how much longer are you planning to stay?”

“Uh…” you mumble, as you assess your work and quickly estimate how much more time you’ll need before you can pack up. “I need to get the painting done by tonight, ‘cause I need to go over some of the parts with pencil tomorrow, so...maybe another couple hours?”

“Cool,” he says, as he dumps his stuff onto the table to your left. “I’m probably staying that long too.”

“Cool,” you mutter, despite the fact that internally, you are anything but cool. You’re a nervous wreck, praying to the heavens above that you don’t make a fool of yourself in Steve’s presence.

Eh, you’ve already got paint on your face — how much worse can it get?

You covertly watch Steve out of the corner of your eye as he pulls out a set of drawing pencils and a sketchpad from his drawer and gets to work. It’s nice, having him there to keep you company. The two of you make small talk every now and then, but for the most part, you’re both focused on getting your work done as fast as possible.

Sometime after the one-hour mark, Steve brings up his Spotify account and puts some music on in the background, to keep you going for the home stretch. You’re unfamiliar with the artist, but the music is calming and bluesy, enough to occupy the silence, but not too much to make you lose your focus.

You hunker down and finish off the rest of your painting in record time, sitting back triumphantly as you appraise the nearly-completed piece. You need to let it dry before you can add in the last bits of pencil shading, and you still need to mount it into a proper frame, but you’re confident that you can get all of that done by Monday morning.

Steve finishes his work just as you start cleaning off your brushes and palettes in the sink. He comes over and dumps his stuff into the sink beside yours, before turning on his faucet.

“Productive?” he asks, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the running water.

“Yeah. But I’m really tired now.”

“Yeah, well — it’s almost 2AM, that’s kinda expected,” he says, laughing gently. “You live far from here?”

You shake your head. “Nah, just on the other side of campus.”

“Oh really? I’m near there too, I can walk you home, if you’d like.” he offers.

“No, it’s fine, I don’t wanna bother you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah! I’m just gonna walk through all the campus buildings, I’ll be okay.”

He opens his mouth, about to press his point further, but winds up shrugging his shoulders and dropping the topic instead. You finish cleaning your brushes, then place them and your mixing palettes into the appropriate drying racks. When you turn around, you find Steve’s eyes staring directly at you. He startles and turns around quickly, the slight flush on his cheeks making it obvious that he was just checking you out.

Wait — he was checking you out?

Are you imagining things? Could it be? Holy shit.

Steve is resolutely ignoring you, focusing intently on making his brushes as clean as physically possible. You could either confront him, or live with the agony of not knowing what happens next for the rest of your life.

You decide to bite the bullet.

You clear your throat loudly to get his attention. “Is something wrong?” you ask.

He frowns. “Uh, no? Why would anything be wrong?”

“Well...you were just looking at me funny...did I forget something?”

Steve’s eyes widen in panic. “Oh! Oh, that — no, nothing’s wrong, you just...you got something on your face,” he says, gesturing vaguely with one hand. He clears his throat. “I uh...I can get it for you? If you’d like?”

“Sure,” you reply, rolling one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug.

You watch, strangely nervous, as Steve turns the faucet off, dumps his brushes into a holder to dry and wipes his palms on his jeans before stepping closer. Your breathing hitches in your throat as he gently cups your chin and brushes his thumb over your cheek in a featherlight caress. He’s close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off his body, and the warmth of his breath on your skin.

Quick as a flash, he ducks down and presses his lips to yours — a touch that is gone as suddenly as it came.

His cheeks are flushed a scarlet red when he pulls away.

“Um...sorry, I — yeah,” he mumbles.

You blink rapidly, trying to get your thoughts in order. Did—did that just happen?

“Did you just kiss me?”

His blush deepens, if that were possible. It spreads down his neck and disappears beneath the collar of his shirt — a part of you is curious to find out if he’s a full-body blusher.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

You chew on your bottom lip as you take in the situation. Steve’s body is still curled towards yours, and the faint, pleasant scent of his cologne fills your nostrils, making it hard to think. He hasn’t taken his hand off your cheek; beneath his palm, your skin tingles with anticipation.

It’s now or never. Carpe diem, and all that crap.

“That was...something,” you murmur, as your tongue darts out to wet your bottom lip.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, his gaze flicking from your lips to your eyes, and back again. “It was.”

“I—uh, I think we might need to do that again. So that I can figure out what the ‘something’ was. For science,” you add hastily, as the corner of your lips quirk up into a half-smile.

His lips pull into a grin, one that threatens to outshine the sun and makes your heart do an excited little flutter. It’s a smile filled with hope and promise, and it’s taking everything in you not to lean over and kiss him stupid.  

“The start of something new, maybe?” he suggests.

You bark out a surprised laugh. “Oh, do not start quoting High School Musical at me, or this’ll turn into an impromptu sing-and-dance number real quick, I promise you that.”

Steve throws his head back and laughs, even as he leans in closer, curling one hand around your jaw and the other around the back of your neck.

“Anything can happen,” he sings, softly, and horribly off-key, his eyes sparkling with mirth. “When you take a chance.”

“You’re such a dork,” you breathe, as you surge forward and crush your lips together.

—

You’re painting aimlessly, putting paint on canvas merely for the sake of it.

Since his passing, you’ve tried to keep your distance from any and all types of paints; there are just too many memories associated with him. Painting doesn’t have the same allure to you as it once did. Instead, you’ve developed your skills in the world of digital art, favouring Photoshop and cameras and high-tech gadgets over traditional media. Between the two of you, he’d always been the more-skilled painter, anyway. Now, with you being so out-of-practice, a brush has never felt more foreign in your hands.

The colours on your canvas are disjointed and discordant, bold splashes of red juxtaposed by sickly greens and dark expanses of blue. You feel as if you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learnt; how to mix colours, how to dilute the paint to get lighter washes, which colours work well together.

You have no direction in mind, with this piece.

You’re not happy with where things are going, but at least you’re reacquainting yourself with your brushes. You hadn’t realised how much you missed their weight in your fingers, the satisfying give of the bristles as you press them to the canvas. Surprisingly enough, the muscles in your arm and hand still remember how they should move to best lay down the colour. Your fingers are covered in specks of paint and similar flecks of colour now adorn your light-wash jeans.

Despite your best efforts, this piece is becoming increasingly unsalvageable. Layer after layer of colour simply adds to the dissonance in front of you.

A part of you just wants to quit.

You can hear his voice in the back of your head, reassuring and encouraging and comforting in a way that only he could be.

Stop over thinking it, sweetheart. You’re good, you know how to paint. Don’t use your head, just...listen to your heart, paint what you love.

It clicks, then.

He’s been kept alive in your memory for so long, perhaps it is time to share his greatness with the rest of the world.

You stand up, hurrying across the room to get a fresh canvas and a new jar of water. You can see the painting taking form in your mind, with its golden tones, simple brushwork and muted palette. You push your unfinished piece to the side and position your new canvas on the easel, before dragging your stool closer and picking up a clean brush.

You have a portrait to paint.

—

You and Steve are walking down the street hand-in-hand, weaving through the throng of last-minute Christmas shoppers. It is the first holiday season you’re celebrating as a couple, and you’re excited to spend a cosy weekend at home, trading little presents and gentle kisses under the warmth of the covers.

“I fucking hate crowds,” Steve grumbles, “Everyone’s so goddamn rude.”

You laugh, threading your arm around his and pressing your cheek to his bicep, still warm despite the chilly winter air. “Let’s hurry up and get you your hot chocolate, then, before we get crushed to death by all these people.”

He grins, patting your hand affectionately. “You’re filled with great ideas, aren’t you?”

Just then, a store that you’ve never seen before catches your eye. Eager to investigate further, you tug Steve over to the shop window, making him yelp in surprise.

It’s an art supply store — a fancy one, if the decor is anything to go by. The display boasts an impressive array of beautifully-crafted easels, handmade brushes, premium colour pencils and, most notably, a Winsor and Newton 10-colour gouache paint set.

The sleek box is front-and-centre of the display. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the elegant white tubes, with the simple Winsor and Newton logo emblazoned across them. A sheet of paper beside the box holds a swatch of each colour; they look positively dreamy.

“They’re gorgeous, aren’t they?” Steve murmurs appreciatively.

You hum in agreement. “Shame you’d need to drop nearly 90 bucks to get them.”

“I’ll buy them for you,” Steve promises, turning to face you. “I mean—not now, obviously, but one day.”

You smile as you wind your arms around his torso and tip your head back to look up at him. “Yeah? Once your pieces have made it into the Guggenheim and the Tate, you mean?”

“Exactly,” he says, grinning as he bends down to press a kiss to your chilly, slightly-chapped lips.

“I’m fucking freezing,” you mumble, as he pulls away.

In response, he wraps his arms around your shoulders, smushing your face into his torso in an effort to warm you up.

“My little icicle,” he says fondly.

“That...that sounds vaguely sexual,” you say, your voice slightly muffled.

Steve snorts, gently pushing you back so that he can tuck you under his arm. “Get your mind out of the goddamn gutter, please.”

“Fine,” you grumble, giving one last longing look at the set of paint tubes before the two of you resume walking. “Hot chocolate?” you prompt.

“Hot chocolate,” Steve agrees.

—

It is strangely bittersweet, using these paint tubes.

In your mind’s eye, you see his slim, strong fingers wielding a brush expertly, the backs of his hand and knuckles covered in splotches of paint. He was so confident whenever he mixed his colours, knowing instinctively how much he needed from each tube to create the exact shade he was looking for. He had an intuition, a deep-seated knowledge that you’ve always admired.

You personally had never reached quite the same level of skill that he had attained, but you never envied him for it. He had his strengths, he had his weakness and you, likewise.

With this piece, you have a much clearer idea of where you’re going. The painting is taking shape before your very eyes, a creation that is coming straight from your heart. You are literally pouring a part of your soul onto the canvas, exposed and vulnerable, for all the world to see.

As the brush glides across the canvas and deposits streaks of colour in its wake, you feel as if you’re functioning on autopilot. Your brain has taken a backseat and your heart is now running the show, painting what it loves dearly and longs to see. You have no reference besides the memories in your head, the ones that have been your sweetest grief in the most difficult period of your life.

You might not have the same knowledge of colours and composition that he had, but what you lack in skill you make up for through sheer force of will. You don’t allow yourself to question your actions or second-guess your decisions; you know how to mix the exact shade of golden amber for his hair, the precise colour of blue for his eyes, the perfect shade of pink for his lips.

You’re moving on instinct. Your hand and arm and fingers map out the planes and curves of his face, the slope of his shoulders, the breadth of his torso. His image is burnished into your memory, just as his name has etched itself onto your heart.

He may be gone from this world, but you promise yourself that you’ll never let him fade from your memory.

—

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” Steve says, as he drops a package wrapped in brown paper into your lap.

“What’s this?” you ask, examining it in your hands as you sit up straighter. Steve bites his lip and shrugs as he comes to sit beside you on the couch.

“Open it,” he says simply. His hands are clasped in his lap and he is twisting his wedding ring around his finger with his right hand — a nervous tick that he’s recently developed.  

“But—Stevie, you’ve already got me a birthday present!” you protest.

“I know, I know...this is like...an early Christmas present. Or a late Christmas present, however you wanna call it.”

You narrow your eyes in suspicion. “I thought we don’t do Christmas presents?”

“Then, well—this is…oh, for fuck’s sake, just open it, will you?”

“Okay, okay,” you mutter, hastily peeling the tape off.

As the wrapper falls away, your eyes are met with a plain black cardboard box, with Winsor and Newton written across the top in simple white font. From the weight and size of the box, you have a feeling you know what this present might be.

“Steve,” you breathe, as you turn to face your husband. “Is this—”

“Just open it!” he begs, “I’m literally dying from the suspense.”

You laugh, despite yourself, rushing to peel away the protective plastic wrapping that encases the box. Tentatively, you lift up the lid to peek inside, gasping when you set eyes on ten tubes of gouache paint, each one pristine and elegant and so bloody beautiful, just waiting for you to use them.

“Holy shit,” you breathe, putting the lid to one side before running your fingers over the tubes reverently, lips parted in awe. These paints are the stuff of legends; your hands are itching to play around with them.

“Stevie,” you whisper, at a loss for words.

“Do you like them?” he asks, voice heartbreakingly timid.

You nod your head vigorously as you lean towards him, clumsily wrapping an arm around the back of his neck as you crush your lips together, all whilst trying to balance the box on your laps, so that the tubes of paint don’t tumble to the floor. The kiss is clumsy and uncoordinated and you accidentally nip his bottom lip too hard, but that only makes it more perfect.

“I love it,” you whisper fervently, as tears of joy prick at the corner of your eyes. “I love them so much, thank you, honey, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he says breathlessly, strong arms snaking around your body to tug you closer. “God, honey, I love you so much. “

As amazing and unexpected as the paints are, what’s more significant — what’s making tears stream from your eyes — is that, after all these years, Steve still remembers how much you’ve been wanting them.

These paint tubes — yeah, okay, they’re paint tubes, but they’re also more than that. Your heart is on the verge of bursting from all the meaning and significance behind this gift. Painting — and art more broadly — has been a cornerstone of your relationship from the outset, weaving its way into every single significant occasion that you’ve shared, and all the little moments in between. These paint tubes symbolise how far you’ve come as a couple and hopefully, how far you have yet to go.

—

Who would’ve thought that just two days later, he’d be caught in a freak car accident that would ultimately steal him from your grasp? Who would’ve thought that you’d be left a widow, before you’ve even hit your fifties? Who would’ve thought that you’d turn into a shell of the person you used to be, passing through day after bleak, monotonous day without a purpose to guide you?

Life is achingly brief. The things that we take for granted can be taken away in the blink of an eye, leaving us bereft and lost.

Nothing lasts forever; that is the cruel, unfair truth.

You’re allowed to curse and sob and scream with anger, frustration and sadness, but you can’t change the rulings of fate. What’s done is done, and you can either let the subsequent current of sorrow drown you, or rise above it, stronger than who you were before.

For the past two years, you’ve been drowning under the weight of your heartbreak, which has been a crushing burden on your shoulders. It’s been a struggle, just to survive.

But maybe—

Maybe it’s time you tried kicking a little harder, tried to break the surface of these dark and murky waters, to see if you truly are strong enough to rise above.

It’s what he would’ve wanted from you.

You put the final few finishing touches on your painting before setting down your brush and standing up, groaning as you stretch your arms over your head. Your bones crack and pop as you move your body around, your muscles stiff from being in the same position for so long. Outside, the last rays of the dying sun paint the sky in vivid shades of red, pink and orange. You grimace — the fact that the sun is setting tells you that you’ve been working on this painting for at least three hours.

The loud rumble in your stomach serves to reinforce your conclusion.

You take a step back to study your finished piece: a painting of him, from the torso up.

Despite the fact that you’re a little rusty, the resemblance of the portrait to his likeness is striking. It is a painting of him as he has been immortalised in your mind, an image of him as you’d loved him best.

You’ve painted him with his head angled slightly to the right, frozen in mid-turn. His rosy pink lips are parted, the corners pulling up in the beginnings of one of his pure, tender smiles. His bright blue eyes are glinting with mischief, the corners crinkling with joy.

You’re proud to have been able to capture the sharp lines of his cheekbones and jaw, the dusting of freckles across his nose, the ever-present flush of pink that sits high on his cheeks. His blonde hair is slightly tousled and falling over his forehead, the way it used to look like in the early mornings, when his skin was still sleep-warmed and his voice was low and throaty.

You’ve painted him in one of those plain white t-shirts that he used to love, the material hugging his broad shoulders and ridiculously perky chest.

To emphasise the golden shine of his hair, you’ve kept the background dark and simple, abstract strokes of brown slapped onto the canvas with a dry brush. It had been one of his favourite techniques to use to achieve texture whenever he was making expanses of flat colours, and you’re pleased to have incorporated it into your work; it makes it more Steve, somehow.

As a final touch, you’ve used some amber and white paint to make a thin ring behind his head, feathering the paint slightly with a small offset spatula. The end result is that you’ve created a pale, ghostly halo.

Angel boy, you think absentmindedly.

You gaze upon the fruits of your labour with wistful nostalgia hanging heavy in your heart. Though it saddens you to have been made acutely aware of his absence in your life, the process has been strangely therapeutic. You haven’t cleaned out the room as you’d promised Wanda, but maybe, you’ve done something better with your time, and found closure in your own roundabout way.

You still miss him terribly and you’ll probably continue to miss him, for the rest of your days, but—

To miss someone is to have loved someone and that, surely, is better than to not have loved at all. Nothing lasts forever, except, perhaps, your love for him.

#Attie’s Marvel Kiss Challenge #steve rogers x reader #steve x reader #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers au #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers x you #steve x you #my writing #how long will i love you? #steve rogers angst #steve angst #steve rogers fluff #steve fluff

[chewgnay]

Week 3: History of Design

For this week’s journal post I looked at items in my household that are really simple but make sense especially when it seems like you don’t have much space. A lot of the items have more than one function which is pretty cool with pretty much simple designs, nothing over the top or dramatic to stand out.

1) Black & brown desk from Ikea https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/micke-desk-black-brown-s49926749/ This black-brown desk is made in a more modern style that follows the form follows function guidelines. Equipped with 4 adjustable shelves and 3 draws this desk has more than enough space to store items or have them within arms reach. The back portion as seen in the website can be taken off or left on depending on the person meaning that you can fit a computer screen. Or you can be like my sister who installed a dry erase board in that spot and uses it to write notes/have her calendar on. The desk is snug and can easily fit in any corner but don’t be fooled because it actually has a lot storage. The circular hole on the desk top is meant for cables that can easily be organized. The aesthetic of this desk is up to date because it’s simple and can easily match any room.

2) Day bed from Ikea https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hemnes-daybed-frame-with-3-drawers-white-30349329/ This bed owned by my aunt is not only a twin bed but can also be turned into a bigger bed (double bed) and also can function as a sofa. Her room is quite small so this bed works well in her favor when she’s alone but is big enough to make it a double bed when needed. The bed also comes with three storage units located underneath the bed where she uses them to store socks and miscellaneous items. A very simple bed that can match almost any room.

3) Mini fridge meant for beauty products

My aunt purchased this mini fridge meant for storing beauty products but instead uses it to store drinks in her room. I suppose it’s up for interpretation on what its function is but nonetheless now we can store drinks or beauty products in our rooms or bathrooms. It’s super small and can be put snuggly on most counters.

4) LED Mouse

(Don’t mind the dirty mouse)  It’s amazing to see just how much technology has changed over the course of many years. This modern mouse has LED lights that change colors when in use. The two buttons on the top change the sensitivity of the mouse and the other changes the flow of the colors. The two button on the side can be used as hot keys for shortcuts when using a pc or laptop. Any mouse years ago would not be capable of doing this.

5) Portable charger

Portable chargers are literal life changers when you’re out and cannot find a plug to charge your phone. Portable phone chargers are simple to use and are relatively small so you can easily store it in your pocket or in a purse.

6) Mirror/storage

This mirror/storage unit in my sisters room has a simple design but has more than one function. The outside functions as a mirror and then inside is where she stores all of her jewelry and other miscellaneous items. 

7) Mirror/storage unit 2

Similarly to my sister’s mirror/storage unit my aunt also has one but this one is slightly different. This is a full body mirror with the inside as storage for her things. You will also notice that the back portion of the unit also has shelves where she stores bags, her iPad, and water bottles. 

8) Refrigerator  

Designs of refrigerators have change a lot of the years as well. Our old fridge had handles that bulked out but our upgraded fridge doesn’t. The lights inside the fridge are also LED and not regular lights, this means that it uses less energy.

9) Chair

This chair has yet another simple design but fits almost any room. The cushions on this chair allow for hours of usage. The portion where your head would typically touch protrudes out and keeps the neck/head comfortable. The wheels on the chair allow for easy movement. 

10) LED closet light

This light located in my closet detects motion and turns on automatically when I am near it. It’s extremely useful if I have to get up in the middle of the night for whatever reason, but also just in general so that I don’t have to use my phone light to find things in my closet. This light doesn’t run on batteries and just needs to be charged if dead. 

[notquiteprimrose]

While it may seem like we took a break after the kitchen was all finished up, we've been working away. First, we finally finally finished up the floors. They just needed another couple coats of sealant to shine them up and make them look more polished. They're going to look just right after we get the baseboards up (which, don't get us started. Matt's new miter saw is somehow cutting things off-kilter and is off being fixed but it's obviously delayed that process a bit. Plus we have so many damn cans of paint in the same white but in every finish in the garage that we painted a few of them the wrong sheen. So we have to revisit those). Second, we tackled my office area and got it 90% done in A ONE DAY. My parents were kind enough to donate a day to us to be our un-hired hands and between Matt, my dad and I, we laid the bamboo floating floor in my office in just a few hours. (Mom was busy with other things but just as helpful). We'd had to repaint the whole thing after we got the ceilings scraped and retexturized, which was demoralizing since I'd already checked that box off the to-do list with gusto, so the only thing left to do was lay that floor. It was SUPER easy, very gratifying, and after a few rows we really got into a *groove*... hahaha. Sigh. (The uh, the boards were tongue-and-groove). Matt and I had a carload of stuff to return to IKEA so of course while we there, spent a couple hundred bucks on new drawers and work surfaces for me and ALL OF A SUDDEN I have my first home office. I've been self-employed for almost 4 years, now, and I've worked on floors, counters, kitchen tables, coffee shop tables, dining room tables, a desk in a bedroom, a kitchen table in a living room near a toilet and a husband on conference calls all the live-long day and now, finally, a space all to myself. That even the dog can't access because she's afraid of the stairs. Oh, we put our spiral staircase back in, too! We were worried about drilling through the concrete overlayment on the floor but it just chewed up a few cheap drill bits and other than that was simple and just took some of Matt's elbow-grease. The guardrail that matches the staircase and contains the office area can't go back in yet until we find a trim piece to lay along the edge. This will cover up the raw edge of the flooring and transition it to the wall in the living room, and serve as the surface through which we'll need to drill to reattach the rail. A fun thing we learned this week is that the skylights leak after a long day of rain. COOL! Third, we... after many weeks of putting this off... painted our vaulted ceilings and every wall of the living room, as well as the hallway to our bedroom. We did this in the span of one horrendous Saturday and complained 90% of the time while listening to either my Christmas music mix, or 90's R&B. Some walls got a third coat, while others received their first. So it's probably not... finished. The ceilings definitely need another coat but, I do not wanna. It's good enough for now. FOURTH! We started to acquire some furniture and my mother in law will be pleased that so far only *one* little item in our living room is from IKEA. We got the sectional from Rove Concepts, the rug from Overstock (made from recycled materials, to boot!), a chair from my parents that had been at my grandpa's for like three decades and needs to be reupholstered, and, at the suggestion of my friend Lauren, a swivel chair (from Craig's List. Which also could use reupholstering but it's going to be spendy so that's a 2019 project). Oh, the black metal side table is the IKEA objet d'arte. And the lamp is Home Goods. FIFTH, our bedroom has transitioned to winter bed and the color palette got a little wacky but it's mostly indigo blues and rust. The duvet cover is a new Belgian linen one from Parachute home, and was a housewarming gift from my great aunt and uncle who are marvelous and generous and kind.

#not quite primrose #Home Remodel #home decor #home inspiration #home improvement #home renovation

[mekhigreene]

What’s On My Desk + Give Away

This is something that I’ve wanted to share for a while and I thought now would be a great time to do it. I find desk setups to be very fascinating and I’m always curious to see why people use the technology they use. 

Each person’s desk is unique and specially catered to their needs, style, occupation and so on. I figured why not share what I use.

Also if you read the title of this post you’ll know I’m doing a giveaway. I’ll be giving away a new Logitech G703 gaming mouse.

If you’re interested in how you can enter the giveaway check out the end of this post. 

Anyway, enough rambling, let me walk you through what’s on my desk. 

ASUS ROG Zephyrus S (GTX 1070) 

For the past few years, I’ve cycled through several computers because I couldn’t find the right solution for my needs. Towards the end of 2019, I bought the Asus Rog Zephyrus S and it’s been my main computing device since.

It’s the powerhouse of my setup and it gives me power and portability in a very sleek frame. The Zephrus S is a laptop I can travel with and when I return home, I’m able to connect it to my monitor for a better viewing experience. 

I use it for school/work, producing my podcast, light gaming, and even occasional video editing. 

LG – 27UL600-W 27″ LED 4K Monitor

I decided to go with this monitor because I intended to use it for photo and video editing. To be completely honest I haven’t edited many videos in recent months but I still get some use out of this monitor. 

The size of the screen is just the right size and it fits fairly well on my Ikea Linnmon tabletop. I’m also a huge fan of the color, although it’s silver/white and everything else on my desk is black.

At times I wish I had more screen real estate but for now, this monitor gets the job done. Let’s just hope I eventually start editing more videos…

Anne Pro 2 (Keyboard)

The Anne Pro 2 is a keyboard that I had my eye on for a long time and I recently got my hands on it. My desk is on the smaller side so moving to a 60% keyboard is life-changing because of the compact size. 

The version I have is the black with gateron brown switches (For my keyboard enthusiasts). I appreciate having a wireless keyboard and it’s nice to have RGB lighting.

So far I’m loving this board and the goal is to eventually customize it with custom keycaps. That’s a project for another day though. 

Logitech G703 Gaming Mouse

This mouse has been nothing but amazing and I’ve had it for a few years now. I never quite understood people who buy a mouse for gaming and a separate mouse for work. 

For me, this mouse does it all. It’s super light, fits my hand like a glove, it has programmable keys, and I could go on. 

My point is this mouse has been my go-to and I’ll most likely hold onto it until it stops working. 

Satechi Leather Mousepad

There is nothing I hate more in this world than a mousepad that frays. That’s an exaggeration but it seriously annoys me.

I thought the best solution to this problem would be to get a mousepad that isn’t made out of a cloth material, so I settled on this Satetchi pad. There isn’t much to say about this thing outside of the fact that it functions as advertised. 

Anker Wireless Charger

Keeping a wireless charging pad on my desk has been way more convenient than I initially imagined. It allows me to keep my phone close to me and check it frequently without the hassle of having to plug and unplug.

Anker makes reliable charging products and this pad was very affordable so if you’re thinking about buying one I can recommend this. Wireless charging isn’t a necessity, but it definitely is nice to have. 

HooToo USB C Hub, 8-in-1 USB C Adapter

I originally bought this USB C adapter with the intention of pairing it with a MacBook pro that I had at the time. Since then I’ve sold the MacBook but the laptop I currently use has two USB C ports so this adapter is still useful. 

Right now I use the adapter to house the USB dongle for my mouse, my external hard drive, and keyboard. When I need to transfer files via SD card I use the SD card reader too. 

This adapter has its drawbacks and one of them being its limitation to support 4k at 60HZ. It irritates me slightly because I can’t directly connect my monitor to the adapter but I’ve gotten over it. 

Western Digital 2TB Hard Drive

Once again there isn’t a whole lot I can say about this item. It’s 2 terabytes and it holds some of my larger files.

I haven’t had any issues with it but eventually, It would be cool to upgrade to an SSD. 

Ikea Linnmon Tabletop

My desk is pretty bare and simple! It’s the popular Linnmon tabletop with Advil legs. 

I think it looks great and it’s relatively inexpensive on top of that. I want to buy 1 set of Alex drawers to increase my storage but that’s something I’ve been putting off for months now. 

Ikea Signum Rack

This is a cable management rack meant to help clean up stray and wild cables. I’ve experimented with using other options but this one works with so little thought. 

And that’s what’s on my desk!  What do you think of my setup? Do you think there are better solutions? 

Now…

Let’s talk about the giveaway! 

To enter all you need to do is retweet my original tweet and click here to enter. 

I’ll be contacting the winner through email. I’ll also be tagging the winner on Twitter so make sure you’re following me! 

The winner will be announced next Wednesday after 1 PM EST so be on the lookout. 

Starting now I’ll be doing 1 give away a month centered around what content I publish. To stay up to date with my post and those giveaways, join my weekly review.  

This is essentially a weekly email where I’ll share whatever post I published that week and I’ll share any interesting insights I’ve come across. The emails won’t be long or spammy and you can always unsubscribe at any time!

Thanks for reading this week’s post! Be sure to let me know what’s on your desk by tweeting at me @greenemekhi. 

Links to everything I mentioned can be found by clicking on the heading of each item! 

(Some of the above links are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, my page will receive some kickback if you click through and make a purchase)

The post What’s On My Desk + Give Away appeared first on Mekhi Greene.

#Productivity #Lifestyle design #technology

[drewebowden66]

37 Minimalist Home Offices That Sport Simple But Stylish Workspaces

If you’re going to go with a minimalist style in just one area of the home, then choose your home office. A clean and clearly organised workspace is conductive to great concentration and an uninterrupted workflow. Less visual clutter leads to less mental clutter, and you will be able to find your needed files and equipment a whole lot faster too. Take a gander at these minimalist home office ideas that have harnessed simplicity to create productive workspaces completely free from distraction, some with simple Scandi styling and a bunch with home office storage designs to fit spaces of all different shapes and sizes.

Designer: Post Formula   Visualizer: Applicata   A wall mounted desk design leaves the floor free from the clutter of desk legs. Keep computer equipment pared back and the desk lamp streamlined to maintain the clean aesthetic.

Designer: JUMA Architects & Minimum Arquitectura   This desktop appears to float due to its cantilevered design and its position in front of a window. With the desk design so simple, it has been possible to select a more colourful chair design without overcomplicating the scheme.

Source: Muuto   A desk bureau has the added benefit of shutting to conceal work equipment when not in use. Desks that close up to look just like a sideboard are a great solution when the home office must reside in a living room or the corner of a bedroom. This one is paired with a Muuto Cover Chair.

Visualizer: Blackhaus Studio   Black and wood tone decor makes this home office a stylish spot, and a pleasure to come sit and work at.

Designer: Studio Wills + Architects   A desk and plentiful banks of storage have been built into an alcove to create ample opportunity for storing files and peripherals.

Visualizer: Angelina T   Sliding doors allow contents to be smoothly shut away when shelving units are in line with a worktop. A potted plant brings a little of the outdoors inside.

Visualizer: Design Rocks   Green is a colour that is said to make us feel energised and therefore productive,making it a great colour for a place of work.

Visualizer: IDunic DesignStudio   Minimalist double workspaces can be a challenge – particularly if one home office user is less minimal in their habits than the other! Incorporate plenty of neat storage solutions to encourage better practice.

Visualizer: Adilet Zulpukarov   A chalkboard wall provides a spot to scribble down notes without causing paper mountains all over the place.

Visualizer: Angelina T   Clear perspex makes an ideal minimalist desk chair, as it ghosts out of sight.

Visualizer: Yambo Studio   Place a modern home office desk in the centre of a large room for a beautifully airy effect. This white and wood desk design works well in an all white room.

Designer: Studio EI   Just because an office is minimalist doesn’t mean it has to be boring. Check out these wooden box shelves that reach out from a bank of white units at one side of the room, with the lower volume forming the desk.

Visualizer: Design Me Too   Another creative design. A designer table lamp is huddled in a nook created by an irregular line in the units, which is accentuated by a wooden facia. A black modern outdoor chair stands out boldly against light units.

Visualizer: Javier Winstein   A red pressed metal industrial style chair dominates this white and wood tone office scheme.

Visualizer: Davide Tezza   Smooth woodtone sets a dreamy scene in this writer’s home.

Designer: Avenue Design Studio   Not all minimalist home offices have to have bespoke desks and built-in shelving. Look for crisp freestanding Scandi style furniture, like these pieces from IKEA, to put together your own simple scheme.

Source: Risen Developments   A dedicated home office can be created almost anywhere, even under the stairs. Mid century modern desks provide a cool retro look for a simplified home office, these two have been teamed with Eames Eiffel chairs.

Visualizer: Artpartner   Try adding just one accent colour, like this stylish swivel chair in a white home office to give it a little wow.

Designer: DNA Concept   We love how this desktop overlaps the storage unit, tying it in with the white shelving up the wall.

Photographer: Blupics   Choose desks with wire tidies to tame electrical cables. These desk lamps come right out of the tabletop too.

Source: Dearkids   One desk can do the job of two.

Visualizer: Gustavo Coutinho   Make your study decor appear more minimal by sticking to black and white office accessories.

Designer: ZE Workroom Studio   Combine pieces of furniture for a streamlined look, like this desk that morphs into a media storage unit at one end.

Designer: LUI design+associates   Catch rubbish in style with a unique trash can.

Source: McDonald Jones Homes   This gloriously warm wooden wall decor is freshened with a white desk, drawer units and chairs. An open shelving unit visually separates it from the other room without blocking out all of the light.

Visualizer: Now Design   LED lighting strips highlight niches in wooden wall decor.

Designer: Nordico   Set a desk behind a partially diving wall in an open plan minimalist room to screen the work zone from a relaxation zone.

Visualizer: Anna Jopek   Even a basic shelf can be utilised as a mini desk. Dress it with a statement chair and a desk lamp to complete the effect.

Visualizer: I Spy DIY   This Scandinavian workspace uses plants to freshen and soften a plain space.

Visualizer: Julien Stiévenard   A towering plant stand brings greenery to the side of this desk.

Photographer: Alexandra Timpau   Mezzanine levels can provide quiet office space in the treetops.

Visualizer: Denis Khramov   Stretch a worktop across a window sill.

Visualizer: Michael Nowak   Whilst white is the minimalist palette of choice, colour is not against the rules.

Visualizer: Artem Kupriianenko   An L-shaped desk puts everything close to hand.

Designer: Industrial Facility (For Herman Miller)   A Herman Miller Mirra 2 task chair provides comfort when working for long hours.

Source: Herman Miller   This Herman Miller Embody chair is seated at the ingenious Herman Miller Renew sit-to-stand desk, which encourages its user to change their posture throughout the day.

Source: Herman Miller  

Recommended Reading: 50 Modern Home Office Design Ideas 50 Modern Home Office Desks

Related Posts:

Apartment Living for the Modern Minimalist

Scandinavia Meets Japan In These Minimalist Work Spaces

25 Stunning Scandinavian Workspaces

Home Storage and Organization Furniture

3 Minimalist Monochromatic Homes With Modern Lighting

Refresh Your Workspace With Ideas From These Inspiring Offices

[garagedoorshampshire]

50 Modern Home Office Design Ideas For Inspiration

Just about everyone has to bring work home with them at some time, whether that be a stack of paperwork or saved on a laptop. If you’re not an office worker then perhaps you need a dedicated spot to sort the household bills and correspondence. Even the kids need a area to sit and concentrate on homework or do computer research. Whatever your needs, the chances are that you need a home office – whether that looks like a complete room, a nook or a pull-out shelf, that’s up to you. Here are 50 modern home office ideas to help you decide, and inspire the design of your study space decor.

Designer: Shang Yan Design & Guan Pin   A large table in this home office setup acts as a double sided desk for two users. This is particularly suitable if you’d like a dual home office space that doubles as a dining room, because by just adding a few more chairs you’ve got an ideal family eating area. Just make sure you have plenty of space nearby to properly clear away all work things before dinner.

Visualizer: Sivak+Partners   If you require a great deal of storage space for papers, files and reference, then how about this rap around run of cabinets and home office shelving for inspiration.

Visualizer: DucTayone   A desk can be situated just about anywhere. Behind a sofa is an ideal spot since the length of a sofa matches the span of a desk. Decorative shelving installed behind the sofa can also work double time as office storage.

Visualizer: Dương Phan   This treble work space is brightened by the contrasting colours and shapes of three different home office chairs, and an arrangement of coloured wall planters.

Designer: Nordico   A low partition wall makes this space feel like a separate room without cutting it off from the rest of the living area completely.

Designer: CCS Architecture   Two Herman Miller Aeron chairs sit back to back between two bespoke home office desks in warmly wood clad surroundings.

Designer: Tom Robbrecht   This tall partition wall cuts off visual distractions but still allows the room to flow into the next area thanks to open walkways at each side of it. The Eames Group Management Chair can move swiftly on castors between the integrated wall shelving unit and the desk.

Designer: LUI design+associates   A small home office may benefit from having fitted furniture, with a made-to-measure desk and units. This fitted desk sweeps over the top of a unique trash can , which is available here, to join with a matching cupboard and bookshelves. A few stylish monochrome prints decorate the free wall space around the window, and a designer table lamp adorns the worktop.

Designer: Fertility Design   A retractable wall gives the option of being open to the home or completely closed off when workload demands more quiet. More of this cool sliding glass wall home office implementation can be seen here.

Designer: 61architects & YYdesign   Visualizer: Jan Morek & Jana Simonidesova   Symmetry is maintained by placing two matching floor lamps at either side of this modern home office design, which is raised up on a platform in front of a stunning picture window.

Designer: Skylab   Two individual spaces have been created in this unusual home office layout. It is divided by a centrally situated asymmetrical desk that mirrors a unique cutaway window. The window slices through wall and ceiling as through the building itself has been cracked in two.

Visualizer: Michael Nowak   Home office colours don’t have to be neutral. Colour can inject energy into a room, helping the inhabitant to feel motivated and inspired.

Visualizer: Dmitriy Schuka   This cool home office decor situates a vibrant turquoise desk and multicoloured seating against a black and white backdrop.

Designer: A Lentil Design   This window into the adjacent living area can be quickly and easily opened and shut to suit.

Photographer: Alexandra Timpau   A mezzanine level provides a great opportunity for creating a contemporary home office. A leafy view makes this one feel like a tree house.

Photographer: Soopakorn Srisakul   Talking of treehouses, this beautiful home office has a sapling growing straight through its slatted floor.

Architect: Olha Wood   It can be hard to squeeze a formal work area into a living space, but many of us could utilise the wasted floor area under our stairs. You may have to clear out a hoard of old coats but clearing the clutter to set up an area like this would be so worth it.

Designer: Post Formula   Visualizer: Applicata   This simple home office keeps the floor clear by implementing a wall mounted desk design and recessed shelving.

Visualizer: George Dimitrov   On trend industrial home office decor can be achieved by introducing metal shelving, leaving ducts exposed and decorating with concrete and wire framed pendant lights.

Visualizer: Denis Karandiuk   Exposed brick makes up the backdrop to this industrial home decor. Wooden shelves placed at various levels add homey touches to the raw wall. The industrial style table is paired with an Eames armchair.

Designer: Locati Architects   Distressed swan chairs add to the cosy ‘worn-in’ style of a rustic home office.

Visualizer: Blackhaus Studio   Even the smallest alcove or nook can make an ideal place to set up shop. All you need is a set of wall shelves with the base shelf wide enough to situate a laptop on, and high enough to rest your legs comfortably beneath. Add a desk lamp and a smart home office chair, et voila!

Visualizer: Design Me Too   The best home office designs provide smooth form and function. This desk has been imagined as a volume that descends from the ceiling and climbs down the side of cabinets before bridging the gap and diving into the floor. Indoor plants breathe life into a soothing neutral colour palette, and cool geometric accents bring the decor bang on trend.

Designer: Emily Henderson   Photographer: David Tsay   A quirky gallery wall with a wooden backdrop makes this a truly personalised space. Two bright red wall sconces add extra character.

Designer: Studio EI    This home office shelving extrudes from a bank of storage units. The higher volume acts as a bookshelf whilst the larger base volume forms a computer desk.

Designer: Mark Studio   Photographer: Russel Smith   Small yellow accents go a long way in this white and yellow decor scheme. Coated shelf brackets and a coordinated pendant light fixture is all that’s needed to add decorative flair. The base of the Eames molded plastic chair ties in with a few aqua highlights.

Visualizer: Zarysy   A floating desk creates a tidy looking space, minimising the clutter of supportive furniture legs. Separate moveable wooden volumes hold the PC tower and a printer unit.

Designer: Shmidt Studio   The About A Chair by Hay sits in front of a selection of bespoke home office organization units. One tall unit has a concealed storage space behind a door in the front and open shelving to the side that is accessible from the desk. A set of drawers on castors can be pulled out and moved to a more convenient spot for access, or to be used as an extra worktop.

Source: Ikea   This Scandinavian home office uses entirely freestanding units that can easily be relocated should the need arise. Monochrome and botanical artwork decorate the bedroom study area.

Architect: Studio Wills + Architects   Home office decorating isn’t reserved for closed off rooms, even an alcove can be completely boxed out in different decor to make a stand alone study. These cabinets are all grey in contrast to the white room decor in which its situated. Even a thin threshold of flooring has been changed to grey tile to mark a definitive change of purpose, along with a sliver of wall detailed in grey.

Designer: Angelina T   Adding the right window treatment is important for practicality as well as aesthetics. Situating your desk in a place with plenty of natural light will help you feel awake, but ensure windows won’t cause reflections on your computer screen as this could strain your eyes.

Designer: Alina Gulianytska   Home music studios need plenty of bench space to hold extra equipment. A shallow runaround worktop is an ideal solution where space is limited. Pull-out surfaces can hold a keyboard or other peripherals.

Visualizer: aTng 糖   If you have an untameable abundance of papers and equipment its best to be realistic and plan for it rather than kid yourself that you’re going to manage a minimalist workspace. Choose a set of neat magazine files to group like-with-like papers in a jiffy. Utilise small boxes and baskets for irregular shaped bits and bobs. Invest in more than one set of desk drawers, but in a matching design for a cohesive look. Bright colours work well as they bring light hearted cheer to organised chaos.

Source: Ikea   White and woodtone decor and accessorising can make even the busiest space look super smooth and stylish.

Designer: I Spy DIY   A good dose of botanical influence works terrifically with white and woodtone too. Introduce a healthy collection of indoor plants to your desk area, they can even improve the air quality.

Source: Muuto   If you’d rather not be faced with work when you’re in relaxation mode, a computer bureau is an ideal fold a way solution. When closed it will unobtrusively blend in with the rest of the living room/dining room/bedroom furniture. Choose a desk chair like this Muuto Cover Chair, so that when not in use at the desk it will look attractive as an accent piece.

Visualizer: Alexandra Rudenko    This Scandinavian style home office has gone all out botanical with leafy print wallpaper, artwork and accent cushion.

Visualizer: Julien Stiévenard    The indoor plants in this one are displayed on a tall plant stand, and teamed with black accent pieces. A faux fur throw makes the desk chair a little more cosy.

Visualizer: TayOne Design Studio   A home library creates a backdrop here, with a rocking chair poised for a reading session or contemplation.

Visualizer: Mr_Kaleo    This double desk setup sits beneath a large peg board wall, ideal for pinning up inspiration and rough ideas, or for keeping tools and equipment to hand.

Designer: Thao Nguyen   Shallow picture shelves work well over desks as they don’t overhang or overcrowd headspace.

Visualizer: Thu Quynh Nguyen   A dining table is a typical spot for ploughing through extra paperwork, kids homework or firing up the laptop, but when dinner time rolls around it can be inconvenient for everyone. Instead, consider setting up a dedicated area nearby so that you can jump straight back into it once family time is through.

Designer: DHD   Use every bit of vertical space when book and file storage is at a premium. A librarians ladder is an absolute must to keep all of those volumes fully accessible.

Designer: Avenue Design Studio   Two IKEA drawer units form the centre supports of this double desk arrangement, making good use of the space that would otherwise be eaten up by two more trestle legs.

Visualizer: int2 Architecture   How about a platform bed-office combo with storage built right in? modern outdoor chairs like the Eames wire chair work great at a desk…

Source: Risen Developments   … Or the Eames molded plastic chair provides a smoother backrest. A few personal photographs and decorative vases will make a work space inviting too.

Visualizer: Design Rocks    The green of this home office desk cuts straight across adjacent closets, bringing both areas of the room together.

Visualizer: IDunic DesignStudio   Soft lighting sets a comfortable tone.

Visualizer: Studio 13    Panton S Chairs create a bold symmetry in this double home office.

Visualizer: Trinh Viet   Bar stools at a high table work best in a creative space where you might spend time standing at the table too, such as when cutting fabric and paper.

Looking for more home office inspiration? Check out: 40 Beautiful Home Office Desks 30 Stylish Home Office Desk Chairs: From Casual To Ergonomic

Related Posts:

30 Inspirational Home Office Desks

Unique Home Office Desks

Creative Workspaces

Workspace Inspiration

36 Inspirational Home Office Workspaces That Feature 2 Person Desks

Craft Room & Home Studio Ideas

from Interior Design Ideas http://www.home-designing.com/modern-home-office-interior-design-ideas-photos

#Interior Design Ideas

[endlessarchite]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakami” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j

[statusreview]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakami” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy

[interiorstarweb]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakami” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. published first on http://ift.tt/2uiWrIt

[additionallysad]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. http://ift.tt/2z0S8J1

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakami” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

#additionally sad home renovations

[lukerhill]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakani” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakami” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

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Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do.

We have SO MANY posts that we want to write for you guys (we’re currently working on a full living room update post – and one about all the appliances and window blinds we got for the beach house). But ever since we shared a picture of the kids bedding we picked up at HomeGoods for our daughter’s room in the podcast show notes for Episode #69, we’ve been meaning to share a room update.

Because dang it, kids grow up. And sometimes they don’t want their 7-year-old room to look like their “little kid” room anymore (please can’t 7 still be little?!). So here’s how our daughter’s room has grown up a bit – but not too much. Thank goodness there aren’t New Kids On The Block posters (or their 2017 equivalent) quite yet. I know they’re coming! You might remember that it used to look like this right after she upgraded from a crib to a daybed back in the day (I think this was taken when she was 3, sniff!).

And we later got her a larger bed and made a few other changes at her request (we shared this post over a year ago, but mentioned we still wanted to tackle a few things, like adding a headboard, etc).

Well, a few months later she told us she didn’t want the canopy anymore. So down it came. And with the canopy gone (which you can also see around the 3-minute mark of this video house tour we did last year) the raindrops were looking pretty weird. Some were even half-painted along the line where the canopy once sat. We considered just touching them up, but they were dubbed “too babyish” by our girl, so over the last several months we’ve been making some little tweaks here and there – including a new paint color on the walls to cover up those drops. We sanded them slightly, then primed, and then just used two coats of White Heron by Sherwin Williams. It totally covered them and the entire wall feels flat to the touch. Whew.

Also, because I’m neurotic, it should be noted that our tiny client has now decided that she likes the purple side of her comforter better, so these room photos all look slightly odd to me because I’ve already become used to the purple side being up, and I have to tell you: SHE’S A BETTER DECORATOR THAN I AM, because it looks so much better that way. I have no idea why, but the cooler purple pattern just works with the rug so nicely. Still might change out the curtains someday – but on the whole it’s looking a lot more finished lately.

Certainly a far cry from the room we started with:

But back to that headboard that we mentioned we were searching for, oh, over a year. We eventually found this treasure on craigslist for $90 (yes, I’m 35 and I call old wooden things treasures now). It’s a complete bed with side rails and a footboard (the seller said it’s 100 years old and it actually has holes in the frame to wind rope around to support an old straw mattress!). There are newer comparable beds that are $1000+ (like this one from Wayfair), so yes yes yes to this craigslist find! For anyone looking for a similar secondhand one, there are some good ones on Etsy and Chairish.

When we propped up the footboard it was feeling kind of dark and imposing in the room (both visually and literally – we all kept bumping into it), but the footboard is so cool on its own that we’re planning to use it as a headboard in our son’s room eventually. It’s not exactly the same, so it’ll be cool to see what looks like this headboard’s sibling in his room.

Since we weren’t using the fully assembled bed, and just wanted to attach the headboard to the wall, we used some scrap wood to create a cleat on the back of the headboard so it could hang independently of the rest of the bed (here’s where we showed you how to make a headboard cleat). I love that it brings something old to the room, but the spools still keep it feeling fun. When I tuck her in I probably talk way too much about how cool it is to have a bed that’s 100 years old. Moms are so lame.

I’m also obsessed with how the little pom-pom trim that lines the comforter sort of mimics the shape of the spools in the headboard. It’s like it was meant to be together (again, we found that gem at HomeGoods – and the llama sheets are from Target because, llamas!).

The white nightstands are from Target. I loved the campaign hardware detail, the nice functional drawer, and the fact that they’re white (we had old wood side tables that looked super heavy with the wood headboard – so my tip would be to try mixing in white night tables if you’re battling that issue yourself). She still has her trusty pink touch lamps that we got her over a year ago (I don’t have to tell any parent this, but kids love tapping things on and off – it’s one step away from my childhood favorite: The Clapper). Also, I love that she uses the drawers for practical things like storing doll clothes and housing a tiny toy mouse.

The abstract art above the bed is from Target and the pink quote art is just a page I tore out of a magazine called Flow. It reads “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Murakani” And it has a cat on it for good measure. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang that up there in the frame she said “Yes because NOBODY else likes to read BabyMouse comics AND Goosebumps at the same time!” This kid.

Back to the walls for a sec – we went with White Heron paint after really liking how it looked throughout the beach house.

It plays well all of the other existing paint colors: the bright white trim (Benjamin Moore’s Simply White), the soft pink ceiling (Benjamin Moore’s Pink Cadillac) and the bold closet door (Benjamin Moore’s Cinco de Mayo). White Heron is a very soft warm grey-tan color, so we joke that her room’s kind of like a muted Neopolitan ice cream bar now, thanks to that strawberry ceiling and vanilla trim.

While we kept the DIY toy/book storage as is (we made that a few years ago and covered the process in our second book), we did refresh some of the art around it. It was fun to see what things got to stay and what got switched out, and our daughter insisted on the little silver antlers (they were downstairs in a pile of things that I was going to use at the beach house) because it was the perfect spot to hang her dreamcatcher keychain. Clearly she’s into form and function – ha!

This photo cracks me up because you can get a sense of how the bookcase has kind of become a playhouse of sorts too. Part of the “de-babying” of the room was also heeding her request to remove the homemade dollhouse in the closet (more on that in a moment while I sob quietly behind my laptop). We craigslisted it to a grandmother who was very excited to have it for her grandkids, so we were happy it was going somewhere that would get more use, but I do find it oddly reassuring when I walk in and the bookshelves have been turned into tiny rooms for her toys.

I also had some fun bringing in some gold, just because I love those gold Target frames and have probably purchased my body weight in them, but also because I like that there’s some silver layered in with them as well (in the antlers, the oval mirror I painted years ago for her, and even that little silver spotted dog sitting on the frame). That dog actually used to be a drawer knob but it cracked and fell off, but he has lived on as a little picture-sitter of sorts.

The wall opposite the bed still features her old changing-table-turned-dresser (it’s almost 8 years old and still going strong!) with that pretty inlay mirror above it that we all love. I think the only update here is that I spray painted the yard sale moose lamp gold because he used to be white and I thought he’d pop more, but he’s looking kind of weird in this picture. In person he’s less bold looking (more of a soft hammered gold) but here he looks… I don’t know… like a golden chicken nugget.

That laundry basket is an estate sale find and the curtains are Ikea panels I dyed light pink years ago. They’re probably the next thing we’ll upgrade in here, because they’re so lightweight that it’s hard to keep them looking like they haven’t been whipped by a daily tornado.

The paint color change has been good for lots of reason. As much as we liked the white, her room always felt a little disconnected from the rest of the upstairs because everything else had a warm tan-gray color on the wall (this room had been a super crisp white color). Plus, her room gets the best light of any room in the house, so it can definitely handle something less stark. We also like how it’s helping the white elements – like the crown molding or the lampshade below – pop off the walls a little better. Once again: chicken nugget moose, everyone.

As I mentioned earlier, the closet got a little update too. With the dollhouse not getting used anymore (*SOB!*), we basically just asked our daughter what she’d rather use that spot for, and she requested a place to draw and write. I had always thought a vanity might make sense in there when she’s older, so I love that this works as a drawing/writing nook and could also be a getting-ready space for her someday (since I’m sure someday she’ll need a larger and more legit desk, which I imagine might take the place of her bookcase down the line).

We grabbed the vanity at Ikea since it’s small enough to easily fit into that nook (remember when we “wallpapered” that back wall with fabric years ago). Then we just brought in one of our spare dining room chairs for a place to sit. It had been in the attic since we got upholstered end chairs for the dining room, so it’s nice to make use of it.

The desk/vanity flips up on one side, so it’s great for stashing pencils and stuff, while the other half has a normal drawer for tucking away papers. I’m not sure I agree with Ikea’s inexplicable decision to make the inside of the vanity blood-red, but it actually works in here.

It may seem like overkill to have three kids drawing/writing surfaces in the house (if you include their desks in our office and the bonus room) but they all get used, and this one is nice because it’s just hers and she can work in here quietly in the morning before her brother wakes up.

For anyone looking for all of our sources in one place, here’s a little get-the-look mood board for ya. We hunted down similar items for the things that are thrifted or discontinued:

1. Walls (SW White Heron) / 2. Trim (BM Simply White) / 3. Ceiling (BM Pink Cadillac) / 4. Door (BM Cinco de Mayo) / 5. Touch Lamp / 6. Bedside Table / 7. Faux Plant / 8. Woven Pot / 9. Windsor Chair / 10. Vanity / 11. White Pouf / 12. Faux Antlers / 13. Abstract Print / 14. Toy Storage / 15. Colorful Print / 16. Antique Wooden Spool Bed / 17. Inlay Mirror / 18. Midcentury Dresser / 19. Throw Pillow / 20. Llama Sheets / 21. Rug / 22. Bedding Set

I’m sure it’s not the last evolution this room will see. At some point, she’ll probably need a dresser with deeper drawers (what once held onesies and diapers perfectly is sometimes feeling maxed out with sweatshirts and skinny jeans). And I really can see that bookcase getting swapped out for a full-sized desk in a few years if she wants more space to spread out. And who knows when and if those curtains will change. Will it be before or after the Nick Jonas posters (or whoever’s the current heartthrob at the time) go up? Everyone says it, but they really do grow up too fast (*sniffle*).

Psst- Wanna see other kids updates and projects? Here are dozens of tutorials from our archives. 

*This post contains affiliate links*

The post Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. appeared first on Young House Love.

Who Puts An 100-Year-Old Bed In A Little Girl’s Room? Um, We Do. published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt