A Wheely Great Bedroom

Tiffany McInturff has had the design bug since she was a little girl. Much to her parents' dismay, she was constantly changing her childhood bedroom. When she had kids of her own, she wanted to make their rooms as special as hers had been. For the boys of the house, Jachin, then age 7, and Joshua, then 9, that meant their room had to include lots of wheeled vehicles.

So Jachin got a race car bed (a secondhand Little Tikes model; similar ones are available at Toys "R" Us). On the wall behind it, Tiffany painted a speedway mural and embellished it with pictures of cars cut from magazines and calendars. She even added signs to the closet door to make it look like a garage.

An avid collector of Thomas the Tank Engine trains and accessories, Joshua also got a trompe l'oeil setup: a locomotive bed that appeared to be emerging from a rail-tunnel mural.

The inspiration for the room's train table came from one Tiffany saw in the Children's Museum of New Hampshire. She fashioned her smaller version from a piece of plywood. The holes cut in the tabletop give "conductors" 360-degree access to their miniature train landscape.

"The room is perfect for those cold New Hampshire winter days when the kids want to play indoors," says Tiffany.

Tiffany's Project Pointers:

For the mural, look for inexpensive paints in the "Oops" section of home improvement stores, where customers return unwanted colors — there are great bargains to be had there. Draw your design with pencil first and use painter's tape to make neat straight edges where needed.

Paint the entire train table surface and then, if you have kids who climb on everything, attach the tracks with screws. You can unscrew the tracks when your kids are older so that they can make new layouts.

Every now and then, add a new detail to the room at night while the kids sleep — a new car cut from a magazine and hung on the wall or a homemade tree for their train table. They'll love waking up to new surprises.