Browning Boys: Gavin's new Big Boy Room

It all started here in January with Clay drawing what he imagined for Gavin's big boy "tractor" room. I couldn't find anything I liked on Pinterest and was super happy that Clay had given it some serious thought and already had a plan! I love him more everyday!!!

We kind of came to a standstill then since the bedroom that was being transformed was filled to the gills with Clay's "stuff". Now let me stop here and tell you that this room was our guest room/my peaceful escape room. Well of course it was only that right before and right after someone came and stayed with us because the other 360 days of the year it was overflowing with hunting gear and whatever else Clay wasn't sure what to do with but didn't want to throw away.

Well in March I decided that we needed to have this completed by Gavin's birthday so that he would have plenty of time to get used to sleeping in a new room before baby brother came along. I didn't want him to associate getting "kicked" out of his old room with the new sibling.

So at the beginning of April I got Clay to promise that he would have everything cleaned out and got my brother to promise he would come and pickup all of the furniture we no longer needed in there by the Friday after tax season ended because that is when I wanted to take off of work and PAINT!!!

Our plan for the paint was to do the bottom half the wall in chalk-board paint and the top half of the wall in normal paint with the huge tractor also being chalkboard paint. I had researched and found that their are two brands of paint that sell tintable chalkboard paint. One being Rustoleum, which came in 12 colors and the other was Benjamin Moore which was available in any color you could think of. So since we wanted tan/khaki and Lowes was an authorized dealer of Rustoleum we headed there first. Big disappointment, not only did they not carry it but they wouldn't order it either... and neither would any of the other Rustoleum authorized dealers in this area.... So then I went to the Benjamin Moore website and found their list of authorized dealers and called all of them within 100 mile radius of Valdosta. Finally, I found one in Thomasville of all places that carried it so we planned to make a trip there that Saturday to pick up paint at Sampson's Paint and Decorating.

In between the picture above and the picture below were HOURS of sweat and toil! I LOVE to paint so I had volunteered to do the tan/khaki and Clay with his artistic skills would take care of the tractor. Well either a lot has changed since the last time I painted or pregnancy has taken a much larger toll on me that I thought because it took 10 hours to paint the tan/khaki stuff on those grey walls. Now granted the ceilings in the front bedroom are 15 foot high in some places so that was a nightmare but boy was I worn out!!! So even after 10 hours of painting there were still some places that needed to be touched up by Clay before we moved on.

Clay's masterpiece!! So proud!!

Next step was priming the chalkboard parts with chalk and that was another good upper body workout.

And then yesterday the crowning achievement of Gavin's new room arrived!! His made to order bunk beds by our wonderful and talented friend Chris Singletary!! Before I realized he made bunk beds I had searched all over the internet looking for some sturdy but reasonably priced wooden bunk beds. Everything I found was either cheaply made or super expensive so one night as we were eating dinner with them the subject came up and Chris said he could build them for us!! Hooray!!

I just assumed that Gavin would sleep on the bottom, silly Mama! He headed straight for the top!! The picture quality is pretty bad because for some reason Clay has a really hard time taking pictures with my phone and I was on doctor ordered bed rest for the day. But as you can see Gavin is super happy with his new bed. And as an added benefit he is scared to come down the ladder so it has cut the coming out of his room at night down to zero....probably won't last long though, unfortunately.