DIY Home Decor: Tween Bedroom!

By Sherie
Introduced by Amy

So, my sister Sherie has THE COOLEST house.  Have you seen it in her Home Stylin post?  If not, you are missing out.  Fer real.  You gotta check it out pronto.  So, after she recently re-did her daughter's bedroom I was like, "Um, this sweet room wasn't part of your home tour on SOM!  So, you must do another post." And she delivered!  My niece Livi is the coolest pre-tween ever...more into books, music, and art then boys, clothes, and shopping, so I love that this room is such a perfect fit for her.  She is close to my heart, cause we were best buddies when she was a little girl and we would always draw and dance together.  Plus, I too was more into books and the Beatles than the Disney Princesses at her age.  Her room would have been my dream. :)  I'm happy Sherie is letting us all see her hard work in this cool bedroom!
-Amy

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When Number 5 was on it's way, we decided we needed to turn the upstairs Craft/Scrapbook/Storage for anything/Black Hole into some sort of livable bedroom. It was decided that my oldest daughter Livi would get the room - banking on my motherly instincts that the baby was a girl, then girls would out-number the boys. (Motherly instincts NAILED IT.) As you can see, we let the kids have a little fun painting and writing on the walls. Why not, right? Behind the wood door is the furnace for the house… no we did not do that. The room inside would have made the sweetest closet, but alas… it holds a commercial-size furnace instead. At least her room is warm in the winter.

Here are some Before pics:

The walls had old, nasty wallpaper that was fairly easy to rip down. The kids had fun pulling it down after I soaked it with a rag. After we got off all of the loose pieces, I left the rest to just mud over. I fixed all the wood trim and repainted it, then textured the room (including the ceiling) and gave it two coats of paint. And don’t be fooled – that took weeks to accomplish.. with breaks every three hours to nurse the baby ☺. There's a big unused, chimney in the room, so we came up with the idea of making it into a tree which went perfectly with Livi's idea to put a hammock in her room. I liked the idea of very light blue paint which worked great with the look of the sky in the background.

After the walls were painted, Livi painted the trunk of the tree then I began filling in the branches, freehand. We had found the owl stickers at a craft store which roosted perfectly on the branches. My mom added the leaves afterwards.

The floor was a struggle. Originally I was going to sand the floorboards and stain them a dark brown to match the hallway. We realized the gaps between the boards were so big, we would need to put a lot of filler in between the boards and if we were to sand it and stain it, the filler would stain lighter and really stand out. So I rented a big sander and did the whole floor, then filled in the gaps one at a time with thin wood putty and sanded it with a hand-sander. There were still some gaps where the filler dried and shrunk back, so yes, I had to do the process AGAIN to fill it all in. It took hours and the sand blows all over the room and coats the walls and ceiling… plus yourself and breathing through a mask is just awfully comfortable…. But I got it all done! And yes… weeks again. We got the walls / ceiling all cleaned and I decided to paint the floor a pale yellow and seal it with a deck sealer. Thanks Sherwin Williams for the idea. Connecting the hammock to the chimney was interesting, but we just anchored it inside the chimney flue and bolted it to the other side. As long as you don’t weigh over 100 pounds, you’re good! So no, I’ve never been in it... Livi tells me it’s nice….

We had fun furnishing her room with refurbished pieces. We had a few new pieces, mostly from Ikea. Livi reads like it’s going out of style, so we set up her own bookshelf. We found an inexpensive clothes rack to hang her dresses with the rest of her clothes in the drawers under her bed. So Livi loves her room! If definitely reflects her quirky, modern style. I did almost all of the work in the room, so I was proud too! In a few years, we plan on putting a bathroom in part of her room, so the chimney/tree will come down, but we’ll have fun scheming the room out again.

Here's the room!
-Sherie

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Isn't Livi's bedroom so cool!?  I mean, who the crap doesn't want a hammock in their bedroom?  And, Sherie is pretty much the cool mom for working so hard to help Livi have an awesome room...Livi had shared a room with her younger sister for a long time (who is all about the pink! Haha!) so now she's pretty stoked to have her own space.  

So, let's hear about your bedroom growing up!  I loved mine.  I shared with my poor sister Laura till she went to college (I was a hoarder as a little kid...all sorts of "collections" of treasures -aka- weird crap that kids love, like marbles and a million crayons/pencils.  I was NOT fun to share a room with.) From middle school on, I quit my pig-sty ways and spent many hours decorating my room...I bought tons of cool records from the library basement sale and hung the covers in my room, along with a giant beatles poster, a collection of globes, and huge magazine collages I painstakingly made.  Oh, and I rigged up a string of lights and several lamps to all turn on with the same switch of a power strip.  (Lots of extension cords...haha, what a safety hazard!)  

How about you?  What was your room like?  Did you share with a sibling?  Did you do your own decorating or did your mom?  If you have kids old enough to care, do you let them have a say in their bedroom decor?  I'd love to hear. :)  Not that it's an imminent concern (my two kids are little little) but, I've wondered about how that will go down, cause I care so much about the aesthetics of my home--I'm a little leery to give a kid free-reign, ha. What if we end up with black paint or One Direction posters everywhere??  *shudder*...haha.

I hope you loved Livi's room!  Be sure to Like, Pin, Comment, etc to show the love. :)  Thanks friends!  Have a sweet fall day!