apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Thanks for making my eyes bleed.

To answer the question, no, the various bedrooms I occupied as a child are no longer in the family, which is actually sort of nice, because all of the old keepsakes and decor disasters have all been edited out of existence by now. Whew!

Nope. My mom threw all my stuff away when I moved out after high school.

I love the pattern and story. Not sure if it would work in person, but the way it is cropped that is a very interesting and artful photo.

for some reason, the spring break of 6th grade i thought i needed a grown-up bedroom with white walls and medium-blue carpet... if i had only know the years of white walls to come, anyways, my mom let me paint on the walls, so i had random murals and every single poster of teen heart throbs up, and even wrote in sharpie (which you can't paint over without some serious paint). but the house is owned by someone else now and i wonder what they've done with my old room, but know that it would be weird to ask to come in.

My childhood bedroom has been turned into my mother's work-from-home office. -_-

... it's been like that for 6 years.
... I'm 24.

Nope! When I moved out my second year in college into my own place my mom revamped my old room into her workout room/home office/reading space. The only remaining items in my room are my old dark red sheers I had for window treatments.

Is this the bedroom of a serial killer?

No, shortly after I graduated high school my parents left the country on a 2 year overseas assignment in the Azores and I moved across the country to live with a grandmother (which didn't work out so well...)

So everything was gone within a few months and I had to quickly learn to survive on my own.

The rooms arent intact, but all my STUFF is somewhere hidden away in storage, and my parents are digging it back out for my niece. Scary. Even my tshirts... Yup. THey have a problem with throwing things away.

My parents have moved and retired since I lived at home. I don't even have any pictures of my old room there. What a shame because I would love to have one.

As far as the room above, it is a little busy for me personally, but I'm sure the family all those pics belong to love and cherish it.

Awesome post--it perfectly captures a mother's bittersweet feelings about parting with her son's childhood while meeting her needs for domestic improvements and hospitality toward guests. I love that she chose a floral fabric with a black ground to match the wall.

Nope. My parents moved right after I went to college.

But I do love rooms that reflect more than one person's taste. It's always more layered and interesting, even if the particular room above isn't my taste. I think that's the secret of the great old English country houses: they reflect the taste of a half dozen eccentric relatives.

My parents moved to a one-bedroom apartment not long after I moved out - so there's no room that's mine at their place. But we (the parents and I - and siblings in early years) moved around several times -- five moves total. Only the last two times did I actually have a room that was "mine" - and it barely felt like mine.

Now if I have children, I would like to keep their rooms as is for awhile or until I wanted a smaller space. Even then, I could definitely see myself decorating a guest room in their tastes for when they might want to visit.

I still don't understand the use of the royal 'we' in posts like this one. I'm confused.

And I don't understand why people feel the need to keep complaining about the editorial 'we' usage. It's a standard practice in media outlets.

Oooh, I love these pictures. The collages look like they're organized into square panels, which I like, and the contrast between the collage and the rose print is awesome. The black in the bedding really ties it together though.

@ slowdown -- speaking as a journalist, I respectfully disagree. The backlash to new journalism (i.e. never mind the topic, every article is really about me, me, me, the writer) has resulted in a new overload of "objective" reporting (i.e. omniscient, rather than first-person), not the antiquated royal "we."

Fake objectivity has its own pitfalls. I once had to write up an interview with John Travolta in which we wound up doing improvisational dance and debating the merits of homoerotic nude mud-wrestling while referring to myself only as "a reporter." The result was... well... idiotic, viz: "Travolta and the reporter writhe across the floor in a symbolic representation of budding shrubbery." Who is this Reporter, and how did he/she/it wind up in the story? Very confusing to the reader. Sometimes first-person is the only way to go -- as long as the focus remains elsewhere. Sigh.

Anyway, I can't stand the Royal We and wish AT would drop it. It's never effective, always pretentious, often grammatically incorrect and plain lazy. Sorry, AT.

P.S. I realize I use too many adjectives. I, too, am plain lazy when I know I can get away with it. So.

I am with slowdown - it has yet to bother me. I keep seeing the comments about it and normally I have to reread the post to actually get it. If you can't realize the poster is talking about herself and people she knows, well then maybe you should revisit some of your schooling or stop looking at media outlets.

RE: PAINTING OVER SHARPIE MARKER

I noticed someone talking about how hard it is to paint over sharpie marker. There is a special primer called "Killz" that works very well.