When 4-year-old Sam Schultz moved in with his 6-year-old brother, Will (thanks to the arrival of a new baby in the family), their mom, Kennedy, wanted their room to have a theme that would be fun for both boys. Their favorite Justice League characters -- Superman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Batman -- immediately came to mind. Hence this fantasy city featuring a simple cityscape mural, a skyscraper bookshelf, and a crumbling brick tower, populated by the whole crew. It was an instant success. The design has worked out especially well, Kennedy says, because within the shared space, "they've got enough little storage areas that they feel are their own."
THE CITYSCAPE MURAL
The sky-blue walls in the bedroom provided a perfect background for the new cityscape (1). To begin, Kennedy marked the skyline with masking tape, referring to the boys' Superman comic books for inspiration. She adapted the buildings to accommodate the furniture, making them taller, for example, behind the bunk beds. Then she rolled on a base coat of tan paint for each structure. Once that was dry, she peeled off the tape and added roofs and windows using dark brown paint and a medium shade she created by mixing some of the brown and tan. Finally, she dotted the scene with superheroes traced from comic books (2). Fine details were filled in with black permanent marker.
SKYSCRAPER BOOKCASE
Next, Kennedy turned her attention to the furnishings. Against one wall were matching desks, and between the two, Kennedy envisioned a tall, skinny bookcase. "I wanted it to look kind of like a building, but my main goal was that it separated the two desks so they felt like they each had their own space," she says. Her innovative design (3) features front-facing shelves and, behind them, more shallow shelving placed back-to-back to face each desk -- just the space for treasures such as baseball trophies and souvenirs. Kennedy built the unit out of pine boards glued and nailed together, then she painted it to match the mural.
THE BRICK TOWER
Inspired by his experience building theater sets in college, dad Wayne came up with another storage space idea: a shelf tower covered with fake bricks, some of which appear to be crumbled away, to match the cityscape theme (4). It turned out to be the most eye-catching, and laborious, part of the project. He built the basic structure from one sheet of plywood cut into four long strips (three nailed together to form the sides and back of the case, and the fourth used to create shelves) and painted it a grayish white. For the bricks,he used strips of luan plywood cut into 7-inch lengths, hacked up with a saw ("to make them look broken and old"), painted red, then splattered with white and black paint and wood-glued in place. The middle shelf holds a fish tank (5) that both boys can see from their beds.
