When a child is leaving home for college, there’s no way to anticipate the stream of emotions for parents when the door closes for the last time and the child is gone—sometimes for good.
But what’s not as apparent on that day is the aftermath when those emotions get poked at again, sometimes years later. And in that aftermath comes the realization that when kids leave home, it’s only the start of a long process that goes beyond the physical move.
Our clan went through that this summer when the most obvious evidence of our son’s 18 years in our house – our first-born − was literally erased with a coat of paint five years after he moved out.
Though I always knew the day was coming, I will give our 15-year-old daughter Rachel credit for understanding what was at stake the night she said the words, “Dad, can we paint my room?”
We called it the “A” room. It was a work of art in my mind for the precise nature of the painted University of Arizona logo that dominated the room. I confess to leaving out the required ® symbol that I thought could someday lead the UA trademark police to show up at my door. They never did, even though images of the room occasionally appeared on Facebook and Twitter.
The paint job, done for my son Adam as he entered high school in 2007, was a monument to Wildcat fandom, the top half red, blue on the bottom, split by a white wood border. It was matched with bedding, red and blue furniture, and a collection of memorabilia worthy of the school’s own Hall of Champions at McKale Center. Except for the apparently permanent San Francisco 49ers stickers that we can’t seem to peel off the light switches, the room was all Wildcats, all the time.
Adam moved out entering the 2011 school year to attend the UA, a traumatic experience in and of itself and another story for another day. His two sisters were masterful in hiding their joy of knowing they each would now have their own bedrooms for the first time. Alana, the older of the two, first moved into the A room, not daring to ask for a color change. But as she approached her senior year in high school in the fall of 2013, she wanted a space in her own identity and asked to move back to her old room. A coat of paint later and it was hers with Rachel moving into the A Room.
Rachel is 15 now, a sophomore in high school, strong, confident, artistic, athletic and a Wildcat fanatic in her own right. She kept with the program for awhile, decorating the room with her own UA memorabilia, including a collage she made of Wildcat football and basketball ticket stubs. She put up framed photos taken of her with her favorite UA basketball players Gabe York and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. A drawing she made of current UA quarterback Anu Solomon came back autographed and was framed and put on the wall.
But this summer, the day arrived. It was time for the A room to go.
My recall of the conversation is — I think — is a lot different from what actually happened.
We were at dinner. My seat is across the table from Rachel. She said something like, “Dad, can I ask you something and you won’t get mad?”
When a parent gets that question, a Rolodex of thoughts starts spinning in your head. I had no idea what was coming, but I didn’t think it was good. Then she said it.
“Dad, can we paint my room?”
The first instinct was to lean across the table and ask if she was out of her mind, if she knew how much work went into painting the perfect A, what the negative karma might mean for the upcoming UA football season. I took a moment to catch my breath, swallowed hard, gave a big sigh, and accepted the inevitable.
“OK,” I said simply, knowing full well this was going to sting a little.
The practical way to go about redesigning a teenager’s bedroom, said one local interior designer, is to not go straight for the paintbrush.
“I tell my grown-up clients to let me do the paint last because there are a million different colors of paint but there aren’t a million different choices in bedding,” said Liz Ryan, owner of Liz Ryan Design. “One of the things to make your daughter sort of buy into it or to own it is to go to a paint store and get paint swatches and tell her to pick it out, not for the paint but to use as inspiration to go shopping for bedding or window treatments or artwork.”
Once the furnishings are in hand, Ryan said, the paint can easily be matched from the hundreds of swatches found at a typical paint store.
In our project, we actually picked the paint first − light blue, careful to make sure it didn’t match the UCLA Bruins team color, so there was that. We kept the white border ,which ultimately would dictate the rest of the room, a white comforter on order, and a new white dresser. The existing and necessary white shelves already matched and were occupied by Rachel’s trophies and awards.
Therein lies one of the more challenging aspects of room design for teenagers − having enough storage to help keep things orderly, said Lori Carroll, owner of interior design firm Lori Carroll & Associates.
“Managing clutter was a priority for mom and storage can become a design element in a kid’s room,” Carroll said in describing a room she recently designed for a client. “Providing a multitude of storage means there is a better chance the room will stay clean and organized.”
With teens now studying on computers and tablets instead of notebooks and binders, the desk has become more of a home base and less of a work area, Ryan said. The bedroom television is a thing of the past with teens watching their programs on computers, tablets and cellphones.
“It’s hard to insist that a child study at a desk,” Ryan said. “I still do put desks or some kind of surface in a room because it feels like it’s sort of a designated area. But for the most part they’re on their laptops sitting on the bed or they’re lounging on a pillow sitting on the floor.
Our daughter is no different. She has a desk, but if you pop into her room during study time, she’s usually on the bed doing the work.
When it comes to furniture, it pays to be practical, Carroll said.
“Practicality, quality and versatility are important things to look for,” she said. “When they are smaller, you do want the furniture to be fun, however, no one wants to invest in new furniture at each stage of the child’s growth.”
The bedroom Carroll recently designed included an increasingly popular floor-to-ceiling mural installed in the room as opposed to being painted directly on the wall.
“These colorful panels can be printed up to 48 inches wide and are installed like wallpaper using typical wallpaper paste,” Carroll said.
In the end, converting the A room to Rachel’s room was simple. The space all belongs to her now. She’s a budding artist and the room is her canvas. Her artwork is starting to make its way onto the walls.
And when it came time, the actual painting of the room wasn’t as painful as expected. Covering the bright red and blue colors required a coat of white primer for the new light blue paint. I went at it head-on by putting the first roll of primer directly over the A, completely covering it, then moving on to the rest of the room. I could barely feel the sting.
The room remains a work in progress. Some of her UA stuff is going back on the walls and around the room. It’s comforting to know there’s still a place for the Wildcats’ football schedule.
