Ok y’all

(I’m watching The Bachelorette finale so that’s why the southern accent)

I had been talking this up to Devon for months so  last  Tuesday when we had nothing to do we went to get paint for her big room re-do. It was one of my summer goals so I’m glad to check that off the list.

This is going to be a long post because we made a lot of changes.

Here are the before shots:

Please note clutter under the window.

Above is a close up of her corner o’ crap.

The furniture is  from her first bedroom- the nursery. We got it at Babies R Us.

It had seen a lot of abuse in the last five and half years.

So there you have it, A perfectly cute little girls room.

We kind of threw it together when we moved in three years ago but I wanted something more polished and finished looking.

We also  had a clutter issue but that wasn’t our only requirement for the re-do,

Here’s the list.

Do something with clutter

Address the millions of books

Do something cool with the paint

Get as much stuff off the floor as possible

Paint the furniture

Create a faux window seat (that was Devon’s only request)

To start with, I got rid of a lot of junk. Devon never opened her toy box because it was filled with lots of little toys and junk. I basically tossed most of the stuff in the toy box and relocated a lot of the bigger toys. Her toy box will serve as  her faux window seat and now holds the stuffed animal and doll overflow.

Next, I painted the furniture. I deglossed, primed with my valspar primer for shiny surfaces, and then applied two coats of enamel paint. I wanted a gray/white but it kind of has a blue tone to it that I’m not loving. However, I have never been one to bring home ten swatches and stare at them for a week. I just go to the paint aisle and make a choice within five minutes. I’m not a big regret person but I guess I should have stared a little longer.

And as a shout out to all my not lazy but kind of lazy in a way compadres, please note that I painted the drawers

WITH THE CLOTHES INSIDE.

I finished the furniture project in one day! Primed early in the day, first coat of paint after supper, second coat before bed! It was awesome to check one huge project off the list the end of day one. Go me!

99 cent brushed silver knobs were the finishing touch. I would’ve liked to uses some charming glass knobs but at around 5 bucks each, it was out of my price range (I needed fourteen).

The next project was so annoying but so worth it.

I re-pinned this brilliant idea on Pinterest (originally from www.hellobee.com: )

 

Here is the link to the post with the directions:

http://www.hellobee.com/2012/07/03/how-to-turn-crates-into-book-shelves/

I had the crates because we used them for bookshelves in her room since she was a baby.

So I put my dear old dad to work sawing them in half and then I painted them with our official accent color.

Then is was time to mount them. I attached the brackets inside first. Mounting them on the inside is important because it would look kind of wonky if they showed on the bottom when you mount them.

That was the easy part.

As you can tell, I didn’t paint the inside so carefully. Another shout out to my half lazy peeps.

The half crate only sticks out of the wall six inches so fitting your hand and a screwdriver in that small space to mount them is not easy. Thankfully I had a small screwdriver that only about 4 inches.

Between that and measuring to make sure they would all be even when I hung them and putting the anchors in, it was a royal pain in the arse.

Ok, I lied, I didn’t measure to make sure they were even. I’m the queen of eyeballing it.

So cute right?  It’s so much easier for Devon to pick books out now because she can see the book fronts.

Her stuffed animals were in two HUGE bins in the bottom of her closet and they seem so much happier here and it’s freed up so much closet space.

 

Next project was painting the walls. We went really bright with color. Lime green and an ocean blue color. These two colors are darker versions of her new bedspread set that she picked. The six piece set was 30 dollars at Kohl’s after the coupon.

I did two walls in the ocean blue, one in the green and I wanted to try my hand at a striped wall!

I had never done a striped wall and was concerned that they wouldn’t come out right.

But I wasnt so concerned that I abandoned the eyeball method.

I just modified it a little bit.

I measured 9 inches down from the ceiling all across the wall. Then I realized the ceiling might not be perfectly straight so I used my measurement incorporated with the eyeball method for the first row.

For every row after that I measured 10 inches down from the last line. It was a little tricky because for every other row I had to remember to tape above or below the line.

I had painted the wall with the green color and planned on doing the stripes blue. They were going to be 10 inch rows. so in order to paint a blue stripe, I would have to tape above the marking line for the top of the row and tape below the marking line on the bottom of the section.

That’s why every other row looks slightly smaller.

Does that make sense?

 Looks straight to me!

 

Here it is:

The color is much more vibrant. Some day I’m going to address fixing my photos before I post them (but not today).

Next, I painted her closet door and the back of her bedroom door a creamy dark pink color and hung a hook rack to combat all the stuff she piled on her front and back door knob.

 

Before I show you all the after shots, please marvel at how much space was created for storage in the closet!

 

Here are a bunch of after shots:

The painting is by Devon’s favorite artist – me! 

I got the mirror for forty dollars at TJ Maxx.

 

Like I said the toy box is going to be the window seat. I still have to get an assortment of pillows for it. I repainted her three drawer crates and put them on either side to extend it a bit.

 

This shot was taken before we actually hung the mirror

 

 Don’t mind the sheet sticking out below the spread. My bad.

 

 So there you have it. We are all very happy with the results.

The only money spent was on paint, knobs, brackets for the crates and the mirror was my big splurge.

I also spent 12 dollars on her little blue night stand and 30 for the bedding. I guess it does kind of add up when I think of it all together.

So worth it though.

It’s not 100% done, We still need curtains, pillows for the window seat and I want to do something cool to the ceiling fan.

I’ll post all those little updates as we make them!

Thanks for checking in!