The girls’ room

Another update from the homefront.. again, not completely done but pretty darn close! This bedroom is about 12×16, large for an old house, but even a lot of new houses! It was originally the master bedroom of this house, but sometime in the 1960s they added on a  master bedroom. But the bigger-than-average bedroom was key to our decision to move into this tiny little house, since we would need the younger girls (8 and 10) to share a room. Again, as with most rooms in the house, we started with basically a blank canvas. A dirty, beaten up, stinky blank canvas.

We put new carpet in all of the bedrooms, partly because the girls still really play on the floor a lot and I wanted a soft space, and partly because the pier and beam foundation makes for noisy footprints, so anything to help lessen that is a plus! And then we found this adorable Little Miss Matched bedding for the bunk beds we already owned, which was perfect because it has lots of patterns and bright colors that all coordinate but each girl can make their own bed slightly different by flipping the comforter or displaying different pillows etc. If you’ve been paying attention, this is actually the same color we did for the kitchen cabinets.. I had a half a can leftover when we did the bedroom and was still on the fence about the kitchen color, so I just put it on a few doors to try it out.. and the rest is history!

So.. past that, the rest was pretty simple. We already had a ton of black accents, from the middle’s old bedroom and other places around the house, so it was more a matter of putting the stuff they already had in the right places. The room has looked about like this since we moved in December.. cute and simple, zones for each kid but all coordinated and cute.

Enter Pinterest. That devilish little website.. taking a perfectly finished room and filling my head with ideas of how it could be better. What started as a cool pin, turned into a bug whispered into the little girls’ ears.. which turned into some begging of the Daddy Bear, promises from me that it would “totally not be a big deal at all, super easy!” which of course turned into a three day long massive project.

Ha!

But. Finished product? SO. WORTH. IT.

 

Ta-da! Their new room. Yes the contents are basically the same, just laid out differently. And just look at all that glorious space! So much room for my busy girls to spread out their legos, have dance parties, practice gymnastics, play school, you name it! What’s that? Something missing? Where do they sleep? Simple!

We just take out their batteries and put them away in the closet!Turns out our super-big formerly master bedroom also had a super-big closet that was the EXACT dimensions of our five year old Ashley Furniture bunkbed. Well, ALMOST exactly. The bed had to be taken apart and reassembled, but it fits SO perfectly that we don’t have to worry about losing books (or kids!) between the cracks! (Or ever getting the bed out, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!) And so, inspired by a pin of built-in beds, we made it happen. Always a lover of cozy little spaces, this is one of my favorite projects on the house so far.

We hung some little pockets (clear plastic over-the-door shoe organizers that we already had, cut in half) on the back wall, so each girl has space to store personal treasures. Nothing of real value, but you know.. happy meal toys, costume jewelry, scraps of magazines.. all the random kid stuff that my little hoarders love but with a specific space so they don’t get collected all over the floor. The closet was actually so tall that we were able to keep the top shelves intact, and now we can actually reach them (when sitting on the top bed) so we moved their toy buckets to these shelves. Off the floor, out of sight, but easy to get to. Also, the extra step required in getting them out seems to encourage putting one away before moving on, always a plus! Other things that needed storage, like shoes and stuffed animals, are in laundry baskets under the bed. Again, easy to access but also easy to hide.

As I said, the bed *almost* fit exactly.. we actually had to cut a small hole for the decorative edges of the bed to fit. But lemons into lemonade.. we used the little holes to make a top-secret communication system. That sounds super complicated.. it’s a paperclip on a ribbon. But they ADORE passing notes back and forth when they should be sleeping.. I’m sure I should discourage but I love that they are BFFs and it keeps the noise level down!

Quick tour of the rest of the room.. light fixture is from Restore, and was installed when the bunk beds were out of the room and we didn’t want a fan chopping anyone’s head off. I’m still keeping it, and it kind of makes me want to paint giant polka dots on the ceiling, don’t you think?

Heart curtains came with the bedding set, the stripe ones were from Walmart and we’ve had them for years but they matched perfectly.

Little desks were also from Walmart a few years ago, super cheap but I love the size, not sure how long they will last but for now they are perfect. I’d love to have a long desk built on this whole wall, so they can each have space on one end but still some in the middle to share and have friends. It’s on the list.

Letters are from Jo-Anns, just paper mache- style that we spray painted. Frames are a collection from various sources, nothing fancy, with different pictures I’ve printed of the girls with their friends & family. None of the photos were anything special but I converted them all to black and white so that it gave a cohesive look and didn’t contrast with the bright colors of the room. I’m planning on putting a big bulletin board in the space between their initials, just debating the right size/style.

Bean bags are from wal-mart, was the only place I could find solid black, again I didn’t want any more colors and these will last longer style-wise. Chair is from PBTeen years ago. The big white thing is a dry-erase board, Home Depot sells it in 4ftx8ft sheets for less than $20, we cut it down to a 4ft square.

The door, like all the other doors in the house, is from an antique/reclaimed store (not sure which one, we spent a month scouring the metroplex) .. all the doors that came with the house were cheap, 70s hollow-core doors, and most of them needed paint or were damaged. We replaced them all with different vintage doors, varying colors of paint and style, which gives the house a lot of character and just looks a lot more fun. The little girls’ door is my favorite, with the wide glass panes, since they were the only ones who really don’t need any privacy. The inside of the door is soft pink, the other side pale yellow, colors it came with but both worked perfectly.

So.. there you go! Another check off the list! A few details remaining but overall, a super fun, super DONE room. Finally!

p.s. Forgot to add one important detail.. their clothes! Ha! We had an empty hall closet (well, not empty.. it was becoming a catch-all for things I wasn’t ready to deal with but wanted to hide) that is right outside their door.. clothes fit perfectly on the shelves and we added a tension rod up high for the few things they hang. Voila!

EDITED TO ADD: Oops! More than a few of you noticed that I raved about our eclectic collection of doors and then didn’t include them in any photos!! Sorry! Here are a few Iphone snaps… First of the door to the girls’ room then the two across the hall. I’ll have to take some more with the good camera and do a whole post about them!)