Growing up can be easy to do

RECLAIMED ROOMS

Our primary goal at Space: interiors is to make each room we work on something unique and special. We often have to edit items in order to highlight special pieces and eliminate visual "clutter."

This was exactly the case with a recent client, and I believe he may have learned a life-lesson of helping the less fortunate.

William Jackson is a typical 5-yearold American child. He is full of energy, has the attention span of a gnat and had entirely too much "stuff" his bedroom. There was stuff stuffed inside of stuff.

Storage, better spacial planning and a new color palette were at the top of the list of what we needed to accomplish this task. Will pretty much just told us he wanted a Spider-Man room. I asked his mom, Rebecca, if she would sit Will down and tell him he had to part with some of his collections. She agreed and sat down with her son to tell him the importance of sharing with those who are less fortunate. He responded well and within two days had narrowed his collection by almost half. That's pretty impressive, I think.

We now had a considerably cleaner slate in which to work, and so it began. We always start by selecting a color palette (red, white and blue) to set the tone of the room. After that, a room layout is drawn up, and the search begins for the perfect items to fill the room. Having Spider-Man as our singular requested direction, it would have been easy to fall into the contrived trappings of having a themed room. For this room and this li’l man, we wanted something clean, modern and super-cool.

We painted the walls a Sherwin Williams DuJour white and chose to only paint the ceiling in Sherwin Williams Incredible Red. By doing this, it gave us a definitive accent color without being surrounded in it. Due to wanting very stark, white furnishings, most of the items for this particular room came from online. Overstock and Ikea are great resources for children’s rooms (5-11) because they are not terribly expensive and are built well enough to last through the "kid" phase of growing up. Children are rough on furniture, so why break the bank at this age?

A super-cool concentric circle rug from esalerugs.com looks either like a giant fingerprint or the sonic waves Aquaman calls his underwater buddies with. The red acrylic inserts in the shelving unit are the perfect place to throw action fiqures after playing with them. The bunk bed we selected serves double duty as a single bed and a work space. It also gives him the bit of privacy all children crave. Without any doubt, my favorite part of this design are the two red doors and the super cool vinyl wall graphics. I mean, c'mon, this boy has Spider-Man dangling from his web between two sleek cobalt blue lamps and one suspended from the ceiling.

This was a really fun job, and Will was super excited when we revealed it to him. Mom said we did a marvelous job.

Myron Griffing is the owner of Space: interiors. Contact him at 464-6254.