Built by Triton

Kid's rooms designed to last from kindergarten to collage.
Childhood memories are complex melange of fleeting impressions: dreaming heroic dreams; hugging a teddy bear; stashing a secret diary or collection of special treasures; entertaining an invisible friend. The place that holds the best of these is the "room" - as in "go to room".

But being banned to the children's rooms depicted on these pages is no punishment. And there's another bonus. By design, these rooms will be as much fun to go to five years down the road. All they'll need is a few minor adjustments geared to the changing personalities to their tenants.

In the respect, wise parents and designers allow the child in question to have input in the decorating process, either allowing them to choose an item of furniture (antique or flea-market finds are fun); a coloure (left to their own  devices, kids will quite often opt for the traditional but palatable blue-stripe and pink-rosebud schemes over the lime-green-with-purple-polka-dots alternative); or a crafty and inexpensive decorative touch (such as the stencilled floors in Adam and Stephani's rooms).

As a parents in this story can testify, storage is a special concern for kids, not only for stowing clothes and toys, but to accommodate the passion for collecting that most youngsters succumb to at some point.

Adam Takes A Bow

Lots of little boys live in rooms with a nautical theme but for ten year old Adam, it has an unusual ring of authenticity. Along with sister Stephani and the rest of his family, he's an accomplished sailor.

But mom Nancy, who designed her son's unusual housetop hideaway along with architect Rick Cattapan, had a couple of secondary criteria for this juvenile dream room. "Because the room was high up and away from the rest of the house, we wanted to take advantage of that and let in as much light as possible", she recalls. As a result, all of the windows are unusual: opened french doors a one end of the room reveal a mass of treetops; porthole windows (obtained form a marine supply store) add to the "at sea" illusion, and more adjustable custom windows top a storage area at the room's other end. The result, says Nancy, is "lots of cross-ventilation".

While decorative touches give the room much of its personality, many of its most striking features are architectural. The mullioned windows (Architectonic), the wooden Corinthian columns, and the captain's bed (an old beloved piece from Nancy's past) are a far cry from the go-carts and Wild West ripoffs typical of many decorative schemes aimed at young males.

French nautical stripes, a boating rope banister and a few choice pieces of memorabilia from the days when Britannia ruled the waves complete the nautical picture.

Treetop shipdeck. Adam's aerie benefits from windows on all four sides and bleached oak floorboards stencilled with a nautical knot.

Kathleen M. Smith

Photos: Robert Burley, James Eager, Margaret Belisle