Voila!

It was only the hottest, muggiest weekend of the summer. Clearly, no better way to spend it than by having a DYI fit in The Child's room. My "Free Martha" t-shirt may have to be disposed of as a biohazard and I still have paint clinging to my fingernails, although I think I got it all out of my hair.

The final details were completed on Saturday morning, with The Spouse installing a chair rail. When that was done all that was left was to move all The Child's belongings from the deck and back into her room. A daunting project, to be sure, but one I decided to tackle myself because (between you and me) I was looking at it as an opportunity to do some purging. That's a task that The Child understands in theory but not so much in practice. So I didn't really begin moving her back in until she'd left to spend the afternoon (and evening as it luckily turned out) with her godparents.

It took me a long frakking time but the results were, as they usually are with such projects, worth it.

Behold:

The top of the walls was painted with black magnetized paint, the bottom half with chalkboard paint. Black? you exclaim. A black bedroom? Have you lost your mind? Possibly, says me, but I like to think of a black room with white trim as the decor equivalent of a little black dress with pearls...chic and sophisticated, possibly a little Parisian.

The Child, of course, has a more boho vibe going on so those details are in evidence, too. Which is fine because it is, after all, her room. When I take it over as my studio I can move it back toward the French aesthetic...a black and white toile chaise, for example. But for now it suits The Child very well.

I picked up some frames at Goodwill for mere pence, which we "unified" by painting gold. These hang on the wall to contain her collection of purses and her Broadway show memorabilia:

And this is how we turned her collection of necklaces into serviceable art:

Here is her reading/study area. Her laptop sits on a little movable table that she can pull over in front of the chair when necessary. Storage boxes hold her art supplies, tools for school and reference books.It is all very cozy and grown up. No, the black doesn't make the room too hot. Lord knows we had ample opportunity to test that. Nor is it too dark when it is cloudy and rainy, which it happens to be today. And while I don't know that it will long remain as pristine as it appears in these photos, I can tell you that The Child made her bed yesterday morning without being told so there's that.