I'm not sure why but my wife decided it was time to remodel my eldest daughters bedroom.  Previously it was a sky blue and, I guess, kind of boring, so this time the two of them got together and came up with a color scheme that can be described as anything but boring.  There are four walls so there are four colors; green, yellow, blue, and fuscia - plus there are painted on chalkboards scattered throughout the room.

They also decided to go with black furniture, an orange couch, and a different green bookshelf plus a bight yellow throw rug and a royal blue papasan chair.  Needless to say I was skeptical of all of these colors working out together.  I'll say it now, before you read any further, I was wrong.  It looks pretty good.

As you can see we built a loft bed and slide the couch and papasan chair under it. All of the furniture in the room, with the exception of the blue chair, came from IKEA. This was my first real experience with IKEA and, for the most part, it was good. The directions weren't as crazy as I had been led to believe and assembly went pretty smoothly with one minor exception. That's where the Dremmel comes in.

We built a few different "cubbie" cubes.  The one beside the desk is a 4x4 configuration while there are three separate 2x4 setups.  Two of the 2x4s act as the base for the guinea pig cages.  We had assembled the 4x4, the bed, and one of the 2x4 sets on Sunday.  Last night when I got home from work I decided I'd try to finish the last 2x4s before the rest of the family got home.  It seemed simple enough but I managed to start off poorly right away by attaching a base piece to a side with the base piece backwards.  When I tried to remove the two bolts that held them together I noticed I had stripped out the hex socket on the bolt.  I couldn't remove it.

I tried to use put a rubber band over the tip of the allen wrench but the rubber band was too thick.  I tried to drill into the bolt but all that did was put a hole in the bolt.  Finally I saw a suggestion online to use a dremmel to cut a notch out of the head that you can use a flat tip screw driver with.  Fortunately I bought a dremmel last year - unfortunately our garage is a nightmare and I had a lot of trouble finding the dremmel.  After about 20 minutes of digging and climbing I located it and boy did it work.  Sparks flew, metal shavings poured out, and a perfectly useful notch appeared in the head of the bolt.  Seconds later and I had removed the bolt, flipped the panel, and screwed the bolt back in. 

After that was fixed ther rest of the construction was smooth sailing.  Plus, once Lisa got home we finished the desk and moved out the last of the old furniture (with the exception of an old chest that still needs to find a home elsewhere in the house).

Shannon loves her room and I don't blame her.  While the colors aren't my preferred choice I'd live in her room if I were single.  It's pretty sweet.  I still need to take a photo of the corner with the green bookcase but even it looks pretty good.