A Tween Room Makeover: Before & After!

Buckle up friends – this is a two-part blogging series. Today I’m going to walk you through before and after shots of a tween bedroom makeover! Tomorrow I’ll be back with a summary of how much it all cost (I did this after our trip to Rome, too – sometimes I see people write about redecorating a room or going on vacation and wonder: How much did they spend? Wonder no more!) and what we had to buy new vs. what we were able to purchase at thrift stores.

Background

We bought this house – our first home – in October 2017 and it definitely showed its age. Built in the 1970s, there was dark wood trim, old windows, and chipped, faded paint…everywhere.

For the first few years we didn’t touch our daughter’s room – not a single upgrade. (We were too busy doing fun things like excavating drainage tile around the perimeter of our house, replacing broken sewer pipes, and jackhammering our basement floor.)

Eventually, when we got around to improving exterior insulation and re-siding the house, we replaced most of the windows, including the ones in our daughter’s room. This was not before time – on windy days you could LITERALLY SEE HER CURTAINS BLOWING FROM THE DRAFTS. I had rags stuffed in and around crevices and having new, properly sealed windows was a very practical upgrade.

What We Did…

This August:

• We had her room painted*; three walls in Benjamin Moore’s White Dove and an accent wall in Benjamin Moore’s Tropical Pool. All trim, the closet door, and the built-in shelves were painted in Benjamin Moore ADVANCE® (self-leveling; Pearl finish) White. Of all the things we did to this room, paint provided the most dramatic transformation. *I know painting is one of those home improvement tasks we “should” be able to do ourselves. Well, we are not “those” people. Hiring out was the biggest expense of this makeover, but sometimes you have to focus on your strengths and admit your weaknesses and home improvement jobs are NOT our specialty – see bottom of post for more evidence of this.*

• We bought a new bedframe, added a thrifted chair for a reading nook, bought a bedside table, switched out the dresser (to give her more space), hung some art and shelves, and added display functionality via a pegboard and magnetic whiteboard.

How I Feel

We have changed a lot of things in our house – in fact, the better part of the last six years has involved some sort of upgrade or total renovation. But I think this has been my favourite transformation.

Her room is such an inviting space these days. I love how calm it feels – yet the bright bursts of colour are downright joyful. Isn’t calm and joyful a winning combination for a bedroom? Before, walking into her room made me feel tense and guarded; now it feels light and airy and open. Bonus: it’s SO much easier to keep clean with under-the-bed storage and a streamlined closet.

My kids have never had a specially prepared room. Neither child had a nursery. We were living in tiny apartments for both of their infancies. They slept in Pack-n-Plays instead of cribs and I didn’t change the paint or have space (or funds) to bring in a fancy glider rocking chair. And that’s fine. The kids wouldn’t have remembered any of those details. But I remember and it really hurt my heart at the time. I craved that form of motherly nesting, of getting a space “just right” for my little one and bringing them – and my hormonally vulnerable self – back to a haven.

But then we re-did this room (which feels like a haven) and I think I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I had been holding for over a decade. It doesn’t have gold wallpaper or a fancy chandelier. We didn’t change the carpet and if you look closely there are a lot of dings in the baseboard because, well, this is an older home. And I don’t give two hoots about any of that because I love that we created this space together (other than the painting part, of course).

We’ve started reading books again before bedtime; once I’ve finished a chapter, she makes her cozy lighting choice for the evening – and there is lots to choose from: an LED lantern, bedside lighting, a glittery lava lamp, an LED strip, twinkle lights on the headboard – I kiss her goodnight, let her settle in to read a book on her own and walk out…feeling happy.

Enough words! Here are some pictures. Most of the “before” pictures are from the day we walked through this house for the first time in June 2017…

(Also, I spent less than 5 minutes picking up her room before taking these pictures. It is SO much easier to keep clean; maybe in part because she takes so much more pride in this space now that she’s made her own mark on it?!)

I hated this carpet before (with the old, dingy paint the carpet looked old and dingy). And now – it’s fine!

That little blonde head in the lower left corner is A! She didn’t know at the time this would be her room for the next 6+ years.

I will admit my heart wilts just a teensy bit each time I see the length of her curtains. I love the “puddled” look but it’s not practical for a tween (or our beloved robovac).

But my heart sings – SINGS I tell you – when I see her white closet door. I hated that wood door with a passion. It was so dark and heavy looking. And to make matters worse, the inside of her closet was a horrific shade of sickly salmon pink (no judgment if you happen to like Sickly Salmon Pink and opt to choose it for your own closet walls, but I highly recommend against that decision).

I took all the “cozy lighting” pictures in the middle of the day; use your imagination to picture things being even cozier after the sun goes down. Her pink lava lamp is one of my favourite thrift store finds ever (thanks, John!), but I don’t let her leave it on overnight, so the yellow halo-looking item on her desk is a short LED strip that she can/does often leave on.

And that’s a wrap on the tour! I’ll be back tomorrow with more details about what we got from where and how much it all cost (this bedroom makeover was her long-delayed 12th birthday gift + a “we’re-doing-this-cuz-we-love-you-and-know-you-want-a-space-to-call-your-own” update).

Oops. I forgot I was going to tell you about my DIY mishap. Long-time readers may recall that we had a hole in the wall repaired last spring. It had been caused by the lock mechanism on her door hitting the wall and slowly making a hole in the drywall. We got it fixed, but it didn’t once cross my mind to get a doorstop installed so, you guessed it, the freshly patched drywall very quickly had a fresh hole in it.

Sigh.

Oh well, when we got the room painted, we simply had that hole refilled again. I installed a doorstop – remember when I blogged about my prowess as a DIYer? I believe I may have even used the words, and I quote, I am woman. Hear me roar.

Well, that roaring became a very pitiful Meow when a certain brother in this house ran into his sister’s room with wild enthusiasm, swinging the door firmly enough it laughed in the face of my doorstop and made a new hole in the (now) twice-patched drywall.

I thought I would be smart and put a Command Hook over the hole so she could hang a bag there – serving as both a cover for the hole AND a handy feature. Hooks are wonderful to have, especially if you are a tween and like to accessorize with different purses. This was a very stupid idea. Of course, I recognize now, Command Hooks require surface area for the sticky pad thingamajig to work and a hole, by its very nature, does not have a surface. So the hook held just long enough for me to store a bag on it, where it promptly pulled both the Commond Hook AND a larger piece of drywall and paint off the wall so we were left with an even BIGGER hole than ever before. I had no idea what to do but certainly didn’t want to get it repainted/refilled anytime soon. So we installed another – second – doorstop (still not convinced it is enough to deter this very persistent door), and I used sticky tack to put a giant butterfly over the hole.

And this is representative of why we did not paint her room ourselves. If we had, I can guarantee I would have had weeks of blog posts that started along the lines of: And then there was the time I spilled an entire gallon of paint over the carpet…

Your turn. What’s your favourite room in your house and why? Do you ever thrift furniture? Do you have a nightlight in your room? If you could have one item from A’s room in your own bedroom, which item would you choose? What’s your favourite feature about your current bedroom? What colour is your closet!? Are you good at DIY tasks?