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…
Merry’s fairies!
(Sorry, just couldn’t resist…)
Oh, I do hope you can find some pictures of your daughter’s fairyland bedroom to share! You know I’m going to nag you about this, probably, so you might as well just go hunt them out… ;-)
p.s. It’s really great to see you at communati with the old gang: Resistance is futile, you know!
Now that’s cute. I wish my guys were a little smaller – they’re 7 and 5 and I’m afraid they’d outgrow the theme in a short time…
I did my daughter’s room with fairies when she was just under three. I sketched a lot of different fairies and flowers and took the sketches to my local printing shop and had them put on transparency paper. I did the walls in rag rolled hues of green to look like a forest, the ceiling sky blue with clouds (and I found glow in the dark stars to stick up there which were fun)
I put the fairies on an overhead projector, and blew them up lifesize on the wall – four or five a wall all the way around the room, some flying some sitting on flowers… I painted with acrylics… okay, I have an art background, but anyone who’s creative can do this, it was a ton of fun, too… I’ll have to see if I can find pictures to post for you.
I loved your treatment of silken’s birthday party too, I followed the link over to her blog and finally registered at communati just to comment there.