M's Room Redo

So again, right as we bought the house I knew that I wanted both boys' rooms painted and decorated before we moved in...and before we refinished the floors. :)  Here's the before:

And here are some afters:

M is a big sports fan, so we are decorating in a sports theme for him.  And being from Texas, we are of course HUGE Dallas Cowboys fans so hence the color scheme.  The paint used was again from Olympic (Paint and Primer in ONE) and the colors are Secret Passage on top, and I'm honestly not sure about the color on the bottom.  I'm currently researching that. :) The trim is painted in Snowy Mount.  All wall paint is the Satin Finish and the trim is semi Gloss.  I find that the Satin Finish wipes off better than the other finishes.  Especially with 2 and 5 yr old fingerprints, crayons...etc.

I did install the chair rail myself which took a while, and again, this happened pre-blog so I don't have a tutorial on that.  I do know that you will need a mitre saw and caulk and nails.  Make sure you measure very well the size of your walls!  There were a couple of occasions where I was off just 1 or 2 inches.  Do you know how hard it is to cut a 1 or 2 inch piece of soft pine?! Impossible pretty much...unless you don't need your hands anymore and are willing to saw into your fingers or thumbs.  After installing this chair rail, I'm not sure I'm willing to do anymore...but I am a sucker for the way it looks, so we'll see...one day there may be a tutorial after all. :)

And here are some pics of it all decorated with sports themed stuff:

A great decorating tip! The framed "art" is just scrapbooking paper I picked up from our local scrapbooking store.  Then I got a 12x12 frame from a local craft store and framed the paper.  Hang on the wall and you have instant decorations for very little money! :)  We framed a soccer ball, football and baseball.  M loves it and tells me they are there every night.

I did redecorate this dresser as well!  It started out as a normal brown laminate dresser I got at a garage sale.  The first step was to remove the existing outdated pulls.  Then I filled the holes with wood putty and then lightly sanded the surface to make it smooth and blemish free.  Then I applied primer specifically for laminate surfaces to prep the entire dresser.  No sanding was required!! Then I used the SAME paint I used for the walls to paint it! After all was dry, I drilled new holes for the cute sports pulls I found online and attached the new pulls.  Voila! A cute, themed dresser for M's room.  (sorry no pics of the process, again, pre-blog)

For the switch plate covers, again, I got some scrapbooking paper in the different themes and modge podged the surface of the existing builders covers, applied the paper and modge podged over to create the texture.  Another cheap decorating tip!  You do want to cut the paper a little bigger so that it will wrap around the switch plate cover and attach better without coming off.

I accidentally painted this outlet during the wall painting. :)