Livin' the Dream: While you were out — Landon’s cowboy bedroom

While Leslie took the boys back to her hometown for the weekend, I gave Landon's room a little makeover. It's hard to tell from these pictures, but I painted three of the walls a soft brown color (Sherwin Williams "Hopsack" — SW6109) and painted one accent wall, opposite his bedroom door, with a denim faux finish (Sherwin Williams "Needlepoint Navy" — SW 0032).

North wall, before:

North wall, after:

Northeast corner, before:

Northeast corner, after:

Southwest corner, before:

Southwest corner, after:

We bought the furniture — the headboard, footboard and rails; nightstand; vanity with mirror; and chest of drawers — a year or two ago off Craigslist, all for $180. It's old and has lots of character. So the mirror's clean, those spots are just imperfections. And I replaced the hardware with rope.

Other than the furniture, virtually everything else is something we already had or is a family heirloom/hand-me-down. Besides the paint, the only things I bought new were 99-cent bandanas for the lampshades and one 4x6 picture frame.

In this picture, the piece on the nightstand is part of the livestock "tie-out" from the old Ak-Sar-Ben (if you're from Nebraska, you'll know what that means) cattle barn, the guitar is from Leslie's family with the words "Singing Cowboys" on it and my grandpa picked up the cattle skull in western Nebraska decades ago.

After seeing these before-and-after pictures, I decided to paint the white candlestick lamp. I spray painted it a brushed bronze color, but it looks nearly black.

The framed horses is a pencil drawing by my uncle when he was in elementary school (the same school my dad, siblings and I all went to) in the 1930s. On the back is the original tag showing it won "First Premium" at the Douglas County Fair.