Kids rooms- with a learning curve

Designing your first kids room is exciting, and a bit intimidating. There is a plethora of adorable themes and prints, colors, and it can really make your head spin. Since you don't know your child's personality yet, it really relies on you! Do you want you baby boy to support your favorite sports team, love boats, or animals.

I guess its kind of like your wedding. I remember trying on slim dresses, big poofy dresses, mermaid style, etc. I had nautical themes, farm themes, ocean colors, fall colors. If I could, I think I could have planned a wedding for each season in a different setting.

As with my wedding, I finally settled on a theme/color scheme. I decided to do a jungle theme for my first baby boy. I love jungle animals and I had a lot of things that would go with it. It is that last statement that I realize is where I fail. Usually, every vision comes with a price tag and in order to save money I always look to how to incorporate what we already have. Which ends up leaving the overall design a little flat.

I came across this picture today.

 This was the room decoration for my first born. At the time, I LOVED it and thought there was some great cohesion with the things in the room, and in all fairness, there was. What isn't shown is the art piece with the African animals walking out of the painting and the wood carvings I got in Kenya. There was some cute stuff. But damn if this room isn't screaming BORING! The monotone of the walls, the lack of enthusiasm in the draperies. It feels sterile. A little paint could have made this a different room all together. 

If we look at my next attempt at his room.

Seriously? Wall decals? Not even arranged with any creativity? I did like the orange closet, only because it was my son's favorite color at the time and he loved it.

But this room is the opposite of the first. The furniture and design items are limited at most. The color is an overstatement, especially with the oak trim, and the double curtains. There is a lack of a bedspread and honestly, not much cohesiveness other than sports theme sprawled all over.


As time went on, and my second son moved into the room, I tried to find a way to make it better. I was on a budget and figured the room would grow.


I will say, when I got the bunk bed in and got matching bed sets, it started to look better, though, I still never liked it. It wasn't thought out, and I didn't have the budget for it, so it seemed rushed and thrown together. I blame pregnancy on this one.

On my third kids room, I think I really started to learn. Here is my daughters room.

In true recycling fashion, I was able to keep the jungle theme and girly it up with a pink jungle bed set. It was the first time I went and found inspiration. I decided to take a risk, I painted the trim off white and did a half wall, mimicking the design from Sherwin Williams collection. I took all the colors from this:

Terrible quality photo, I'm sorry. It's the only one I can find from when it was her room. Once again, as my rooms get better, I wish my photography skills did, so I could really show off how good it looked.

After realizing it wasn't fair to give the single girl the bigger room, this room became the boys, and I got a clean slate to start over. I had to figure out, do I paint again, or do I try to fit their red, navy, and baby blue sports theme in here. First thing first, I knew I had to get rid of the green wall, it just didn't work.

The tan and off white did fit the sports theme. Especially when I was able to do the baseball wall. This was one of my original inspirations of the "sports themed room". But in the other room the boys were in, there really wasn't any wall space where this would work. I think it came out awesome here. The colors are SW China Doll for top, SW Dromedary Camel on bottom, the tan stitching is also Dromedary Camel and the red stitching is left over exterior door paint SW Salute. I used a kids paint brush from a water color paint set and just did it by hand. There were a few that came out a little wonky and I painted over them and redid it. I also traced the original half circles with a pencil before starting. Took me an hour or two and it really pops.

Here's the wall in progress:

To do the half wall, I measured along the wall and marked with a yellow crayon, then I laid painters tape just above my yellow marks and used a roller to roll on the tan. I made sure to hit the bottom of the tape and then pull the tape off still wet. I think I got really clean lines. The next stage we moved the beds in and got matching red end tables. The green floors stayed because I thought they gave the feel of a field.

For Christmas we gave the boys these cool skateboards and they fit in perfect with the colors and the theme of the room. I added a bookshelf and kept it the natural wood color to match the skateboards and here it is. I love it. Although the floors are green and fine, I do look forward to the day they have actual hardwood floors in here.

 

Spring at last!!!!

Spring is finally upon us and I find myself diving from one project into another. I really wish I had the mind to complete at least one of them before starting new, but what would be the fun in that!!

Mother's Day came and with it came a dream of mine- my very own grape arbor. It came out better than any store bought one, bigger, and cheaper!!

Best part- built by my wonderfully talented, and patient husband. Isn't it wonderful!?!?! All cedar, cemented in and ready for grapes. We used THIS as a guide to help us with materials. Be sure to shop around for lumber too, we had some outrageous quotes of way over $500 for all the materials. In the end the entire thing cost right around $180.

I've also decided to overhaul the screened in porch. I began the process of staining it today, as well as adding a color pop to the doors.

Now to finish planting the vegetable garden, to finish the expansion to the side perennial bed, and actually get some of my on going paint projects done. 

Office complete

In the beginning of this renovation my husband and I promised ourselves that we would tackle one project, one room at a time. This way we could focus our time, money, energy, and mess on one space. Sadly, that has become quite a joke as we usually have multiple projects going on in EVERY SINGLE ROOM in the house. It's because of this craziness, there is an amazing feeling when a room comes to completion.

On a side note, I hate to say completion, because I often rarely feel like EVERYTHING could possibly be done in a room. But, for the purposes of the immediate future, I'll say complete.

The office, is finally a room that can go on the completed list. Amazingly, it is the last room we have touched and actually the first room to be totally done. Sure, there are a few things that maybe could be moved, a shelf that could be painted. I have a curtain made, but not hung and honestly, I don't know if I will hang it.

Like all projects, after its done, I love it! I want to be in there all the time. I can't understand how I didn't do this 2 years ago, instead of having this messy, ugly, storage hub. So here it is:

I started with this:

If only we had a picture of the mess this room became.
It was the room everything without a home came to die.
We barely functioned as an office, because if I had to dig anything out of the closet, it stayed to rest on the desk. 

After removing the carpet, scraping the glue, painting the trim, changing the light, painting the walls, painting the floors, adding an area rug, and building a craft desk. 


HIS

Here are some quick iPhone shots, I will get the camera out, clean up and show you the goods later :) Isn't it such a cool room!?!




 HERS

Switching it up - bedroom style

After finding ourselves completely done with lack of sleep, we decided that a change in the boys bunk beds had to happen. Unfortunately, with their giant dresser there was no way to un-bunk the beds and keep the dresser.

It became very obvious the best solution would be to give the two boys the bigger bedroom and move the baby into the smaller boys room. 

I was having a lot of anxiety about the design changes that I felt needed to happen. My daughters room had the jungle theme with a green accent wall, it could easily be a neutral start to whatever we decided to do. The boys room with it's oak trim, blue walls, bright orange closet, and sports decals- I couldn't envision it transforming into a girly room. 

My husband told me my priorities were off. The kids were sleeping better and I was concerned about decorating! But, amidst my anxiety, there was a bit of excitement. I never really loved the boys sports themed room. It wasn't coming together like I had hoped. The baby's room was cute, but, because I really wasn't willing to start new and did a lot of recycling from the boys jungle theme I found the room was also missing something. With the switch I had the chance to rethink, replan, remodel. 

I feverishly googled blue girls rooms. Here's what I came up with, here are some of my inspirations.

For the boys room, I am just beginning to figure out my plan. But I got inspired by this picture. I love adding skateboards to the sports theme. My boys love skateboarding and it definitely makes it feel more big boy.

Also, I love this:

My original plan in there room was to add a baseball wall. I love the way the black and white really add dimension here.

First thing first, we moved the furniture and again that pang of anxiety came over me. Neither of the kids stuff really worked in their new rooms. I had plenty of other projects in the house to do before redoing the kids rooms. But, I allowed the excited new possibilities get me through.

The first thing I moved on was to try to get the boys room to look more feminine. The bright orange closet and the oak trim had to go.

I used the Chip It app from Sherwin Williams and I picked out Hibiscous as the accent color to the blue. But, I had a serious freakout at the store and ended up choosing quite a bit more boldly. As I started painting it, I was nervous, but now after I've put the room together I love it. I went with ____________ because I thought it would better match the paper balloons hung by the babies crib. The best change for sure was the trim. The white trim took the blue and instantly made it softer. The bright pink closet added a girly feel. I found an old white book shelf in my parents basement to add some more white.

I think had known I would have kept my white crib and used a white dresser. The espresso just wasn't cutting it. But, with some adorable curtains (here is phase 1 of them). I think the room is coming along. I also painted a little dresser with the pink and green and teal to match the curtains.

 I used the extra fabric from the curtains as a cloth for the top of the dresser. This is where the room will stay for now.

The boys room. Other then finding some matching night stands, I had done nothing. 

What you don't see is the green accent wall on the side of the bed on the left. The whole room just doesn't match. Its been bugging me. So, in a day of - we live in New England and it hasn't been over 40 degrees in a week and we are all sick - boredom. The boys and I painted the green wall white. I was ready to get started on making this room cute.

This morning, I woke up and did this:

I love it. I love that the tan follows the whole room and gives the feel of a baseball field. I am so happy how it came out. The floor in this room is green and it actually has a purpose now as a field. I still don't know that the navy and red motif match perfectly, but definitely its coming along. Our next step is coming at Christmas, we are making the kids these skateboards.

One for each of the kids to round out the sports themed room. After searching for cool, old skate decks, and trying to recreate the adorable room above, we decided this would be the best. I think the final product will be more colorful, this was just a quick mock up. I can't wait to see how it comes out.

Painting the ceiling

I finally got around to painting my first ceiling. I wasn't prepared for what a workout that was. I was literally shaking at the end from reaching up and contorting my body to roll this way and that. 

As I started cutting in I realized that our ceilings weren't white. So there goes any idea of spot painting in other rooms. At the end I don't think anyone would notice my efforts but since the bathroom was my first paint job I was happy to recut the ceilings and hide the horrible cut job I had done with the few splotches of blue on the ceilings where I hit the ceiling with my paint brush. Wow have I come a long way in 2 years. 

So now all we have left to do in here is get a new countertop and we will have actually completed our first room!

Master Bedroom

While updating my pages tonight I realized that I never put up the master bedroom upgrades. Sadly, its been one of the most overlooked spaces in our house since we started renovating. Maybe because it didn't need much, maybe cause I wanted it to look really good. Either way, we sadly lived in a room that looked like this for most of the first year:

I don't have to show you much for you to get the full picture. Behind our bed was another splotch of a different color, the window had yet a 3rd color strip and I was really slow on painting the trim.

Where it gets sad is that after about a year, this is what we moved up to:

Most of the trim painted, still not all, and still the same paint testers. We had our curtain up and for the first time in our life an actual bedroom set. But, my husbands dresser didn't match and we still do not have a bedspread.

When you visit people's houses, its rare you head into their master bedroom. So, honestly, I have no idea what most people's bedrooms look like. But, I do know some close to me and I just love that people put time and effort into how their bedroom looks, they make it "their" space. Both my sister in laws have their rooms decorated beautifully. One even switches out her comforters for seasons. It seriously has me totally in awe. I want to put that kind of thought into my bedroom.

Sadly, we just don't really spend time in our bedroom. We sleep there (when the kids let us sleep) and that is about it. I don't have a walk in closet and so half my clothes are in the hallway closet. We had an old 90's 13 inch tv in there, so we only watched tv in there basically when my husband wanted to catch the weather or something before bed. In my head I have these grand visions of me reading, or relaxing in my beautiful bedroom retreat. But, in reality, its hard for me to get into bed without wanting to roll over and just go to sleep. All the movies and tv shows show the married couple reading, watching tv, and spending all this time in their bedroom. It hasn't been our reality, but I'm not ready to kill the idea yet.

After a lot of time on pinterest and design websites aimed at decorating/designing your master bedroom, I began to get an idea. I liked the thought of grey walls to go with my blue paisley. I also saw this pin, which helped get me to get inspired for some color pop:

It has white, grey, and both light and dark blue. What I like the most is the pop of color. As I started to visualize my bedroom in a medium to dark grey, with navy and light blue accents, I started to worry it would be too cool, too boring. Our last master was a pretty bold burgandy. Not to mention, how do I know what grey is best. The strips painted on the wall changed so much in different light, one looked purple at times and the other was just okay.

Then I found Chip It! by Sherwin Williams and problem solved! I was lucky enough to find my exact paisley online and chipped it!

This at least gave me a starting point. Because I was motivated, I wasn't willing to buy a sample and try yet another stripe on the wall. I knew it was time to go and I just dove in and went with Argos.

We were in the middle of finishing the master bathroom and I saw this as the perfect time to get motivated and at least get all the walls to a matching color. I finished painting the trim (well, most of it).

We found a cheap dresser that almost exactly matched our set to replace the oak dresser my husband was using. He scored a 32 inch flat screen SMART tv, so we can watch Netflix!! I switched out pictures of my kids for art.

Bought some art for behind the bed, using yellow as my "pop" color. A couple blue paisley laundry hampers. A yellow floral pillow, and hey, its a start. Not to mention, very inexpensive little upgrade. At least we can't say we have totally neglected "our" space.

Bathroom facelift

A while ago I posted about painting our master bathroom yellow and the dramatic change it made for us. To remind you, here is a picture of what we started with when we moved in. Not awful, but nothing nice. A few things you can't see are the metallic linoleum, the oak and gold light, oak and gold towel bars and toilet paper holder, and the non-flushing, corroded toilet.

For me to use this bathroom at all, we decided early on to get somewhere to put our towels, upgrade the hardware, and paint. The paint cost us $12 for two samples of Sherwin Williams Banana Cream, the shelves were $20 each, from target. Our hardware on the vanity I took off a desk I had refinished years ago and we were getting rid of. The toilet paper roll and towel bar were free from my parents left over. We did have to buy 1 18 inch towel bar to match and that was $31 from doorcorner.com. We went with Dynasty hardware's Sonoma collection in brushed nickel. I would definitely recommend this over what you can get at Home Depot or Lowes.

The light switch plate was $10. The curtain we had from our old house and matched the shelves perfectly. This took the bathroom from my least favorite place in the house to a room I liked a lot. It was bright, more modern, and felt more of our style. We planned on this getting us by for years and we were both okay with that.

This past week I decided to take the bathroom reno one step further and paint the mirror/medicine cabinet and stain the vanity. We hadn't talked about further changing the bathroom or had any plans off doing anything. I was brushing my teeth looking into our oak and gold medicine cabinet and realized that if I were already going to be using primer and white paint (deck painting), I might as well just touch this up. Once I painted that, I realized it wouldn't be too hard to fix the vanity also.

I looked at a few blogs to do the vanity, but wish I had just gone straight here: http://www.monicawantsit.com/2012/02/staining-oak-cabinets-espresso-color.html

The reason, was that the other blogs did not specify that you DO NOT WIPE the stain, you let it sit. After much anxiety about it not coming out how I wanted, once I read this, it was a game changer. Here is what I started with and what I end up with.

One coat:

Because I wiped the stain, 2 coats got me this streaky mess:

3 coats looked about the same giving me a very depressed feeling. Then I read to not wipe and got this:

Gorgeous!! Honestly, I was so proud and excited at how this came out. I was happy to have these two new changes get us through more years in this bathroom. But, seeing how excited I was about the vanity my husband surprised me for our anniversary with a new counter and light. Which turned into a new faucet, counter, light and toilet!!! It was obvious with the new counter we couldn't put our gold chipped faucet back on, then once we were that far, I just said forget it, lets do the toilet and call this project done (minus floors and shower door).

Yay! Full bathroom reno!!! I keep reading how the return on bathroom work is high and I think we nailed it with this. Either way, we love it and that is all that matters!!!

Ta da!!

This project wasn't without its headaches and I will post on the troubles installing the new sink/counter/etc :)