i never did an official post on the girls' room when we moved in, i had all the intentions, but it just never happened.
so this summer, once we realized we were going to need to shuffle bedrooms around a bit to accommodate baby number three's addition to the home, we started making preparations and plans. see, when we moved in a year and a half ago, we put the girls together in the smaller of the bedrooms and used the larger for the playroom/sewing room. we have an additional family room that was built as an addition about 10 years after our home was built. it's behind the garage and we had been using it as, more or less, a giant storage area. so the plan became to move the girls into the larger bedroom, move the playroom/sewing room to the back room, and make the girls' old room baby miles' room. wow. that was a lot of moving and rearranging for a pregnant lady who is mostly too impatient to wait for the evenings when her husband can help. needless to say, there were a few weeks this summer where i felt like i was living in one of those old puzzles we all played with that had tiles to move around with one empty space... remember those?
here is where the girls lived until this past august:
here is what the playroom looked like pre-move
we knew we were going with bunk beds, so i spent weeks pinning different amazing bunks. the only problem with bunk beds is the cost - holy cow they get expensive!! especially if you want something cool. yikes. so i went back and forth in my head about building bunk beds, but then i remembered that a) we don't know how to do stuff like that and b) we don't exactly work well together on this kind of thing. so, we ended up where we always end up: ikea. we got their cheapest bunk and decided to paint and stain how we wanted so we got the natural finish over the dark. the next hurdle was getting the bed higher in the air. i felt like i wanted to use the vertical space in the room for storage under the bed, plus i felt like the bed we got was pretty cheesy and tiny looking - it reminded me of a toddler set of bunk beds... so i floated different options for platforms, drawers, shelves, build or buy, etc in my head for weeks. here is what we ended up with:
instead of building a platform, we decided to embrace the industrial look - we cut off the bed's legs, painted cinderblocks, and added these lockers the girls can eventually fill up with toys or whatever else they end up wanting in their room. my only complaint is the different shades of white going on - if you are an ikea shopper, you know there isn't really a white option for any of their products - what you get is "ikea white" - completely cream (and it doesn't matter what product you choose, their white is always the same creamy color) i may decide to spray paint the lockers at a later time, but as for now this is what we have!
we wanted a stain/paint combo and i'm just hoping the finish will hold up with these two wild ones climbing in and out and up and down all the time.
the next project to tackle was the dresser... i looked online (ksl & craigslist) for awhile, trying to find something more mid-century, or at least very simple in lines, but anything i came across was either too expensive in my opinion or pretty beat up. so we went back to, you guessed it, ikea. these dressers should really be classified as nightstands, but i guess it's just semantics. basically they are tiny. which honestly isn't much of a problem - these girls don't need a ton of drawer space, i didn't want a huge piece of furniture taking up the entire room, and i really (if i could help it) wanted to find something that would fit under the windowsill. these dressers fit under the window, didn't feel out of scale in the bedroom, and definitely didn't offer too much drawer space, but they did look kind of ridiculous and tiny when placed on their own or even side by side. i contemplated getting a third to scale it up just a bit, but then had the idea of book storage to increase the size. after trying a couple of shelving options, i ended up attaching the shelves to the dressers with some brackets and screws. works like a charm and we have to clean up a few books at the end of every day. beth's favorite things to do during naptime is "read" and play dress up from her drawers. the beauty of doing the dressers this way was that the lines matched up nicely with the beds and i stained and painted to coordinate, as well.
as you can tell, there's not a ton of color in this girl's room. i wanted to do a coral, grey, and navy scheme but getting my husband on board was not simple. he really just wanted a white white white room. our compromise was reached when he realized i, as the mother, was in charge of the kids' rooms. haha. remember how i said we didn't work great together on this kind of stuff???
now that that laugh is out of the way, i decided there was just going to be some splash of color besides the bedding in this room for my daughters. i took the closet doors off and painted the inside of the closet. i went to the hardware store and bought the pre-designed closet organizers and got to work during one of weston's summer business trips. by the time he got home, all was assembled and stocked and guess what? he actually liked the paint! i guess i just had to do it while he was gone and if he completely hated it, he could repaint it :)
i have come to realize our girls have way too many shoe options for a 4 and 2 year old - we are going to have to start lining them up below the shelves on the floor!
the rug was the last item to be found and it adds the perfect texture, pattern, and color to the room. i didn't want an area rug taking up all the floor space - i never want to hide the wood floors! but we needed something for them to land on when getting out of bed in the morning (or those 37 times at night).
when i was searching for new bedding, because i knew what i wanted, naturally it was nowhere to be found. so i bought gray fitted sheets and white flat sheets and pillowcases. i dyed the sheets and 2 pillowcases in my bathtub and, surprisingly, got exactly the shade i wanted! phew!
the only problem has been that i've added loads to my weekly bedding laundry (i was washing the grey and coral sheets together but that resulted in more of a lavendery-gray and have had to separate all three loads - coral, gray, white) not a huge deal, you just live and learn, right?! i still have plans to make at least one more throw pillow for each bed (a white/gray patterned fabric) but that may not happen for awhile (unless i get the itch one of these last days before baby comes).
i wanted a simple valance instead of full blown curtains in their room. a) beth would most likely rip, pull down, tangle, etc. any curtains hanging that close to her bed and b) even black-out curtains do nothing to keep these girls from getting up at 7:30 every morning so i figured we would embrace the dreamy natural light this room gets. with the help of my mom, we made these valances from fabric i ordered online (hoping and praying the corals would match the bedding - wouldn't you know it was perfect!!)
because kate has so many books, i installed an additional shelf at her bedside for special books and books too tall to fit in the bookshelf with the dressers. she has a stuffed seahorse that lights up and plays lullabies and she uses it as her flashlight to read books at night. i can't really be upset about that as it's too cute. she is seriously growing up so fast!
kate and beth love their new room! beth had no difficulty transitioning from her crib to this non-toddler bed. i felt a little nervous because, not only was she transitioning from her crib, but she was moving straight to a twin size bed, off the ground about 20 inches, over hardwood. yikes. but never fear! she has been a champ! she stays in bed fairly decently and always climbs back in when you tell her to. a friend of mine suggested putting a swim noodle under the fitted sheet as sort of a curb to keep her from falling out of the bed and i had to pass that tip along - beth loves her big bed!
kate: thanks for taking a look at my new room!!!
