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Theme Room Ideas>
Boy's Room - Transporation
Race Car Theme
Thanks to Hot Wheels and Matchbox, this theme is relatively easy to start.
Flooring
Charcoal gray commercial carpet gives the floor a road-like appearance.
Black & white vinyl tiles look like the checkered flag.
Add a floor cloth with roads, town and lots of imagination.
Background
Closet doors can be disguised as an auto shop or gas station.
Industrial gray shelving as bookcases. Line with rows of industrial plastic bins in red, gray and black.
Metal lockers can stow toys and stuffed animals. Put magnets on some cars to play here.
Use two real tires (clean, maybe shop samples) and a piece of round glass as a bedside table.
Paint a First Aid station to conceal other storage.
Use a real red rolling toolchest for more storage.
Mount a roadway around the room to conserve floorspace so he can play on the walls.
Mount a dash and steering wheel at the foot of the bed.
Look through a car junk yard for realistic pieces you can add to your son's room.
Paint
Roadsigns, flags, roadway through country and city scenes.
Mark placement of stripes. Tape off stripes by running two pieces of brown tape together vertically down the wall (the masked areas will be your light-color stripe). To ensure even stripe widths, use two small pieces of tape as spacers between masked-off stripes. Repeat across the wall, fudging measurements at corners to compensate for spacing. Remove spacers.
Make paint-glaze mixture. Mix 1 part paint, 1 part decorator's wall glaze, and 1 part water. Adjust proportions if the mixture seems too thick or thin.
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Paint the stripes. Using a brush slightly narrower than the stripes, drag the glaze mixture from the ceiling to the floor, painting the unmasked areas. Let stripes dry, then remove the tape. |
Kid's Cadillac Bed: Christopher Lowell demonstrates how to make a car-bed from Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF). Check out Discovery Home for more of Christopher's great ideas.
Demo Directions:
Build two four-sided MDF boxes the width of the bed and measuring 12 inches high for the base of the bed. These will be placed under the bed platform. Construct the frame of the bed out of 2 x 4s that measure 38 inches wide by 78 inches long by 16 inches high to fit a twin-size mattress plus the hood and trunk of the car.
For the floor of the bed, screw a platform of MDF or plywood to the top of the frame. Attach the frame to the two base pieces, locating the bases where the front and back wheels of the car will be. Draw an outline of the car side surrounds onto MDF including tail fins in the back, the bumper and hood in the front and the front and back wheels at the bottom. The top edge of the sides should be slightly higher than the top of the mattress with the fins extending slightly higher still. Cut out two of the car side pieces. Cut a door in each side by cutting out a square piece from middle of the sides. Attach the doors with piano hinges hung vertically on the side edge toward the front end of the car. Attach the sides of the car to the bed frame with wood glue and screws.
Construct two four-sided wood boxes for hood and trunk storage. Hinge the tops of the boxes with piano hinges. Secure the boxes to the car platform and sides. Miter two square pieces of wood for the car grill and attach to a mitered 2 x 4 support at the front end of the car. Sand and paint the car with bright, glossy paint. (Make it red!!! --Lisa) Attach car door handles, chrome car mirrors, headlights and running lights on the tail fins. Wire the lights to hidden battery packs under the car. Attach adhesive-backed chrome tape cut in a "V" shape to a piece of luan and mount to each tail fin. Trim with quarter-round molding painted white. Use the same foil to define the hubcaps on the wheels after painting the tires black. Attach plastic grid material to the grill area. Make a fun hood ornament.
For Race Car themed party products, go to my party store and type Nascar in the search box, or use this direct link: http://www.hgpgal.makesparties.com/Catalog.aspx?intDisplayableCategoryID=939&intDisplayableProductID=14667
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