I
was cruising right along, hitting all the mile markers of adulthood —
finished school, landed a real job, bought a used car, got hitched, knocked up,
the works. But no one makes it out of childhood without facing something that
makes them say, “Whoa! Am I really an adult?” For most people, that moment
occurs when they’re getting a mortgage or having their first child. My “Whoa!”
moment came when it was time to decorate my childrens’ bedrooms.
           After I got over the fact that I was no longer a child, I hit another
stumbling block: Children’s décor is a saccharine wasteland where parents check
their brains at the door. My husband and I weren’t ready to join the ranks of
parents hypnotized by the dizzying swirl of cutesy wall coverings and cheesy
furnishings that fill interior design websites, magazines, and catalogs.
           Here’s the basic formula: a glued-on
border featuring a theme that is beaten to death in the rest of the room’s
details:
           Blue sailboat border,
           blue sailboat curtains,
           blue sailboat sheets,
           blue sailboat comforter,
           and blue sailboat throw rug.
           Who wants to spend any time in a
room like this? And what happens when sailboats are out and dinosaurs are in?
           “Once you put that border up, you
are stuck with that theme,” says realtor and artist Jamie Columbus, mother of
three-year-old Max and 18-month-old Lily. She and her husband, venture
capitalist Richard Glaser, have taken a creative approach, designing their
kids’ rooms to evolve over time, reflecting what the children are interested
in, Columbus says.
           She painted the furniture offbeat
colors — red, fuchsia, yellow — that won’t seem outdated any time soon.
Instead of installing permanent, theme-based furnishings, she relies on
flexible elements. Each child has a painted pegboard hung low enough so they
can reach their dress-up clothes (Friday’s Child, 34 1/2 State Street,
Pittsford, 264-0444, $85 to $115). Rows of books leaning against the wall on
the floor ensure that Max and Lily can grab one and “read” without having to
confront a crowded bookshelf. Columbus rotates the books and dress-up items as
the childrens’ interests change.
           “Our rooms are not the easiest to
clean,” Columbus concedes. What she gives up in tidiness, though, she makes up
for in playful and accessible rooms she and her husband also enjoy hanging out
in.
Being on the
move was a great liberator for my husband and me when it came to decorating. We were
grad-school nomads, moving every couple of years. We were on the fly when our
first son was an infant, so we were spared those stifling baby-room “musts”:
the poofy dust ruffles, the Pooh Bear paraphernalia, and the dumbed-down Mozart
cassette tapes.
           Then, when our son was two, I was
inspired by his budding interest in outer space. In deference to our
peripatetic lifestyle, I made portable decorations. From a giant sheet of blue
extruded foam insulation (available at any major hardware store, $10 to $30) I
cut a four-foot-long spaceship à la Wallace and Gromit with a foam cutter (you
can also use a knife). After slapping on a layer of white primer, I painted the
whole thing red and drew the details on with one of those chunky graffiti
markers.
           This was a lot easier than it
sounds; I’m not too picky about things looking perfect. The kid was only two,
after all. An artist friend made some papier mâché gold stars and a silver
moon. My husband suspended them and the spaceship from the ceiling with dental
floss, and we called it a day.
Other parents
bring their own unique sensibilities to their childrens’ bedrooms. Brockport
communications professor Carvin Eison says his son, five-year-old Theron,
sometimes talks about the colorful Sankofa bird his parents painted on his
bedroom wall. Although Eison’s quick to point out that the room is full of
trains and cars and books, he is glad his son is also interested in Sankofa and
the other images and symbols from creation stories around the world that are
painted on his wall.
           He and his wife, Ghislaine
Radegonde-Eison, an administrator at the University of Rochester’s Frederick
Douglass Institute, chose to decorate in this lively and unusual way because
Sankofa stories remind them to remain connected to their origins. They want
Theron to grow up aware of his place in history.
           “In order to determine the future,”
Eison says, “you should look at where you come from. You come from somewhere
and significant culture came before you.”
Unfortunately,
our kids will have to learn about life’s great truths somewhere else. It was all we
could do, when we moved here with our two sons — the big boy was four and his
brother was a toddler — to continue to feed their passion for all things
outer-space in their new bedroom.
           The beat-up red rocket ship was
relegated to the basement playroom and we set our sights on the international
space station. What better metaphor could there be for a child’s room? Like the
space station, their room has been under construction for years. Like the space
station, their room plays host to visiting astronauts (and aliens, and Darth
Vaders, and even the occasional princess) from all over their earthly
neighborhood.
           A space station needs interactive
elements, so we looked into chalkboard paint (available at any paint store) and
chalkboard fabric (Fabrics and Findings, 50 Anderson Avenue, $12 a yard). But
we decided to go with magnets instead, and riveted a sheet of shiny metal onto
the closet door. (Actually, I asked a heating and cooling company to do it for
me, $50.) Not only does the metal door look like a serious space portal, it’s a
7-foot-high magnet board.
           On one bare wall we attached lengths
of clear dryer vent tubing that the kids enjoy throwing orange ping-pong balls
into. Although I’m not sure what kinds of lights the space station has, I’m
betting on rope lighting (Chase-Pitkin, $24 to $45). We strung up strands along
the tops of the walls, and it looks really cool.
           What’s a space station without a
view of the heavens? We ordered a 9-by-13-foot photo mural of Saturn from the
Edmund Scientifics catalog (www.scientificsonline.com, $80). More like
wallpaper than a poster, it was a pain in the astral to hang. It covers one
entire wall and the effect is dramatic — Saturn, at five feet high, hovers
over our bedtime ritual, making me feel like James and the giant peach.
Children can
sleep anywhere, as long as it’s not their own bed. The toddler rejected his
crib and wanted to sleep on the floor. His big brother was attached to an old
college-vintage futon that doubled as a couch. So our next challenge was
finding beds that the boys would sleep in.
           One creative approach is to make
something cool. When artist Martha O’Connor wanted her 10-year-old daughter
Lyla to stop sleeping on the top bunk of her bunk bed, she didn’t panic.
           “I wanted her on the bottom bunk
because I couldn’t reach up to kiss her goodnight,” O’Connor says. She came
across several yards of white fabric and envisioned a solution. O’Connor
tie-dyed the fabric and draped it over the bottom bunk, creating a secret
hideaway that Lyla couldn’t resist. Lyla now sleeps within kissing distance on
the bottom bunk in a psychedelic fort.
           But where do the astronauts sleep in
the space station? We considered strapping the kids to the wall with Velcro.
Then my husband came up with his homemade space-bed idea. Rather than buy tacky
beds from a furniture store, he said, why not build them? Seeing my hesitation,
he reassured me that by using plywood and painting the beds high-tech colors
like black and silver, we could be original and save money.
           Most wives probably know that when a
husband says he will save money by building something, it’s code for, “I need
to buy more power tools.” But I was new to this game and I just wanted the room
done. My husband went to the hardware store with my blessing and our charge
card.
           Our children now have plywood twin
beds that ended up costing us more than if we’d paid our way to the real
international space station and brought the beds back from there. But what
really matters is the kids love their beds, and — I confess! — their
matching stars-and-planets sheets and comforters.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2002.
