You know how a successful room decor can be based around one perfect object or piece of furniture? When I saw this little fire truck desk, it struck me as the only significant investment you’d need to make to create the popular firefighter theme for a little boy’s bedroom.

The fire truck activity desk is quite a practical piece, for all its character and whimsy — it incorporates book shelves and storage bench, with a nice flat surface for playing games and coloring with crayons. The rest can be done with paint, and a few imaginative accessories.

Match that fire-engine-red paint at any good home-improvement store, for example, and update the nursery bedside table to match. When your little guy moves up to a youth bed, you might paint it a shiny lacquer-black: it’ll fits in fine with the firehouse theme, for now, but won’t restrict your choices when it’s time to redecorate as his interests change.

Use a metal “fire bucket” for a wastebasket, and cover the curtain rail in a piece of that formed-foam pipe insultation (it’s a black tube with a slit down one side, made to slip over a water pipe) to simulate a fireman’s hose…

Fire stations don’t have those slide-down poles anymore, do they? But it’s still part of the traditional image, so we’ll want one!

You can easily create the effect of a pole with a floor-to-ceiling length of sono-tube, painted up in one of the convincing new metallic paints to look like shiny brass and attached to the ceiling or wall with L-brackets. But do set it in a corner of the room to discourage climbing attempts!

Or, if that’s too ambitious, you can always just tape off a vertical stripe of the wall and paint a trompe-l’oeil pole. If you tape off a narrower stripe along one edge, and fill that in with a slightly darker tone, it’ll help to give a rounded effect.

Don’t forget Spot, the fire dog! A big soft stuffed dalmation to wait at the foot of the bed…