But first! A little (or a lot... possibly way too much...) history of this bedroom. When we first moved in, this room was my sewing/craft room. As I said above, it's the smallest non-bedroom in the house. In all honesty, this room was actually built to be a bathroom. The original builder had it plumbed to be a bathroom - though it has never been one. The homeowners before us used the room as a walk in closet - as it has an adjoining door to the next bedroom as well as a door to the loft. Now, before anyone gets all Harry Potter on me - the room measures approximately 10X12, which is plenty big enough for a bedroom. After the older kids started moving out, I moved my sewing room into the adjoining room and turned this one into a guest bedroom. When our oldest son was moving home after his mission, I painted it bright turquoise with black accents and tried to make it a comfortable space for him. (Heaven forbid I move my sewing stuff back in here and give him his old actual bedroom back, right?) Yup. just add another gold star to my Worlds Worst Mom award. ;). Okay - back to the bedroom history - when our son moved out this room went back to being a guest bedroom. When we moved my sewing room downstairs (because the stairs aren't always the easiest for me), our twins moved upstairs into the bedroom adjoining this room. (more on that project to come!!) I must say that ALL of the littles BEGGED to have this little room. Honestly and truly begged us to let them have it for their bedroom. With the older kids all on their own we have plenty of space for each of the littles to have their own healthy size bedroom - but they wanted the small room. Since the twins were in the bigger room, it only made sense to put Rayroo into this room. By now this room wasn't as cool and awesome as it was when it was first painted - making it kind of sad looking. I forgot to take an official "before" picture - but here's one shortly after I took the bed out of the room:
The bedroom was overstuffed with furniture, toys never again to be played with and loads of arts and crafts projects and supplies. With the smaller space, storage solutions was the only option to keeping this space even remotely usable for this artistic genus. But first - taking almost everything out of the room was a must do in order to get to the walls. Clearing out toys from days gone by, missing socks hiding in the corners and all things bizarre along the way, we loaded up the loft with the contents of Roo's life. And then, amid the upstairs/downstairs, cleaning up, sorting and priming the walls for paint I stubbed my toe on this nice stack of really hard stuff from her room...
I swear I have never stubbed my toe that hard in my LIFE. Thankfully it was on my left foot - which is mostly numb anyway. Basically it added a little extra painful oomph in my limp. Ha ha.
Okay! Back to the bedroom! Geesh - I keep getting side tracked. I promise I don't have ADHD. I think.
AAGGHHH! Side tracked again!! Back to the bedroom now...
After priming and painting the walls - which is way more work than it sounds. That means paint the room once with primer, and three times with "one coat" paint. (eye roll) I say "whatever" to whoever tested this paint and actually called it one coat. Either that or their standards of actually painting a wall and looking good aren't mine. (It wasn't even the cheap stuff - it's the nicest paint in the store.) Okay... end rant... After all of that painting we had fresh, crisp looking walls!
Honestly - there's not much that makes me happier than fresh, crisp, clean walls. I LOVE clean! It's a curse. Or a blessing. I'm not sure.
Anyway, between coats of wall painting, Roo and I went to work painting her dresser. We purchased this dresser when she was an infant from an unfinished furniture shop. I painted it white, and each drawer was a different pastel color - matching her then bedroom. (teaser - more on THAT bedroom in an up and coming blog post!!). Well, something had to happen to that dresser to turn it into something a tween would love. We painted it white - the whole thing. And it's beautiful!
Before moving everything back in, I shampooed the carpet with our trusty Rug Doctor. Then I painted the black shelves white, and started putting the room back together again. This time with less furniture, less toys, and little cubbies to hold Roo's treasures.
Aaahhh! So fresh and clean!!! It just makes my heart happy. Ha ha.
We used some of the grid wall we kept from the shop and used it as a place where she could hang up her bags, hats, belts and bow ties. (the door to the right in the picture is the door that leads to the adjoining bedroom. The open door to the left is the door to the loft).
Because part of the bedroom is like a little cubby, Roo and I decided it would be the perfect art studio area. I used the writing desk I had in a different room as her new art desk. I thrift shop hopped to find mason jars in different shapes as well as baskets and crates to paint and hang on the wall to store supplies.
Here's a little better shot of the desk and wall. (the desk opens up for storage - with cubbies to hold things like glue, scissors, pens, chalk, paper, etc.) We purchased a roll of butcher paper for the kids (Roo) to paint on - so I found a hanger-upper thing and hung it up on the little side wall for her to paint on. It fits PERFECTLY! 
The marks on the wall are from painting previous masterpieces. Roo can pull down the paper, tack or tape it to the wall and paint or draw whatever she wants to. Then tear it off and start again! And then I needed a chair to go with her cute little desk. And I found this little gem on the front patio...
Gross, yes? Yes. But not for long! I took the seat off, cut a new wooden base using the existing nasty one as a pattern. I spray painted the frame yellow and picked out some fabric to cover the new seat. Voila! Or however that's spelt. A brand new chair!
Whooo Hoo!!! Can you say BEAUTIFUL?!? Love it!
I used coordinating fabric to make a custom roman style shade for her window, and another coordinating fabric that we made a "pouf" chair out of. It was so much fun we made 2 of them! We stuffed them with bean bag foam balls (that go every-freakin-where!!) that I found at Walmart and cut up foam left over from other projects. Just FYI - cutting up foam is one of the suckiest jobs ever... it's worse than cleaning out the vacuum after sucking up little bean bag foam balls... Back to the room! One of the poufs she keeps at the end of her bed, and one she keeps on her bed behind her pillows. You can kind of see them in the pictures. We found a throw rug on clearance at Target ($35! Done!) because she hates the plain carpet.
Now my baby girl has a super cute and stylish bedroom designed just for her. She loves it, her friends love it, and the planets are again aligned in her world. AND it's the end of my first DIY project... It was a lot of work, it was a lot of fun, and it wasn't too overwhelming. Perhaps one of my favorite parts of the whole thing is this little weird cubby I found. It was some icky color with chipped paint and everything yucky when I bought it - but I cleaned it up and painted it and we found these cute little potion bottles to put in it. There's glitter in the bottles - multi purpose as craft storage and super cuteness!
Never fear - I have many more projects to tell you all about! Next up: The Guest Room... Stay tuned for more creative awesomeness!!!
~Reb
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