Craft Room Turned Little Girls Room

Approximately six months ago my twins were approaching the 12-15 month age. They were still sharing a bedroom, however, their personalities started to bloom and along with that also came a difference in sleep for the two. Throughout the night they would wake each other causing disruption in sleep for almost everyone in the house. So I made the decision that it was time to split my boy/girl twins into their own rooms.

This meant that I had to… ahem….. give up my craft room. I know right, very sad for this crafty momma. But, if it meant everyone would get a better sleep at night, and there would be minimal disruptions, and I did technically have the extra room, I thought well, for my babies…. Of course, anything to make my family happy.

So today, I am going to share this craft room turned Little Girls room makeover with you.  Let me add that it took a couple of weeks from start to finish, and that I did MOST of it all by myself, with the exception of hubby moving furniture in out of the room. I mean that stuff is heavy for a girl to do by herself, so course I had to enlist him for the heavy lifting.

I do not have a before picture of the room…. You know of it in all its glory of crafting goodieness going on. However, when we bought our house, this room, before I ever knew I was going to have three kids, was to be my dedicated crafting my space. My lil crafting Haven. It was busy messy in here, and up until point, I spent many hours in here. I did some major jewelry making deals in there. I did loads of packaging, website building, and pretty much everything else that went to running a little side business. I also designed lots of ideas for bridal showers, and baby showers in this room, including the stuffing and packaging of invitations for my own brother and sister-in-laws wedding.

This lil ole room has seen some work done in its day, so there was a lot, and by a lot, I mean A LOT of things, supplies, tools, materials, and what nots that to come out of this room, and then I had to find a place somewhere else with my home for it. (More on that later). Here’s a quick picture I snapped just before removing all the craft goods and supplies ( it was messy)!

So once I got my stuff all of out there and the room all cleared I got to work on the makeover.

Pink was on the order to make this room fit for a Little Princess Girl room, and so of course I went to Pinterest, my idea source of choice, for little girl room ideas. I wanted something Pink, somewhat timeless, classy, and floral. Being that her name is Lilly Rose, this seemed rather to be a fitting theme overall. Nothing to Princessy but something just as nice.

Here’s some pins that I came across in my search for inspiration… click the picture to go to the source…

Once I had some ideas in place, I thought, since most of her furniture is white, that I would do highlights of the pink and mint color on the walls, and then bring in florals.

I chose to do a stripe wall on her back wall as the focal wall. This wasn’t the easiest paint job, however, it was all that difficult.

To get the stripes perfectly spaced I measured the entire wall counting in inches. I wanted my stripes to be about a foot tall for each stripe. And with measuring the moldings, my stripes came to about 13 inches per stripe, with the exception of one, the last one being about 14 inches. I didn’t want calculate the exact fraction need to be added to each stripe, and since the molding was there on the last one, I thought, what the hay… 14 inches is good to me.

I got busy taping off my stripes with on the wall. I wanted my stripes to be as straight as possible, so as not to have any wave or ripple going on within the wall. This was the hardest and longest part. Taping off the stripes. But, I found with a little patience in the prep work was required to make these stripes as straight as possible.  People say its all about enjoying the process, and the older I get, the more I realize it is truly all about the process. So, climbing up and down the ladder I went, left to right as I taped off the stripes.

Once my stripes were outlined, I was to finally start the paint process. To make sure I didn’t paint the wrong color to the wrong stripe I went ahead and put a piece of painters tape in every other stripe, to know exactly which color would be what. This may seem silly, but working that close to a wall for hours, can make you come cross-eyed, and this was just one step that made easier.

Next I painted all of the pink stripes, then the white stripes. I had to do two coats of each to fully cover the turquoise color of the wall. I probably could have got away with one coat if I primed the wall first, but I since I did not do that, I did two coats.

Once all the stripes were painted, I moved on to the remaining three walls with the light mint color. I did this over the course of a week, little by little. My legs were sore form climbing up and down the ladder. I also painted the closet this color, since we were updating the shelving in it, we had to patch the walls in the closet, so since it needed paint, mint was the color for it to be.

I allowed the stripe wall to fully dry, probably a day or two before removing the tape form the walls. This was not totally on purpose, I just think it was because I probably had some other event or life thing going on before I could get back in there. Once I removed the tape, my stripes were Oh So Pretty, and I was quite happy with myself thus far. I went back and did a few touch ups where the painters tape failed, but nothing major. For this, I used a tiny paint brush from my water color or craft paints supplies.

Next up was creating the focal monogram frame and board. This pretty floral wall paper I fell in love with scouring Pinterest. It is quite pricey, and trust me, I looked for a coupon, a sale, or some other alternative, but unfortunately, when its true love, you just can’t settle, right? So, after months of pondering and planning this room, I purchased one glorious roll of this dashing wall paper. And I have a ton left that may or may not find its way into my closet somehow in the future. Maybe so future artwork, who knows, its fabulous, and I will def. find a use for it!

Once the wall paper arrived, I purchased some thin wood paneling from my local hardware store, and I’m talking really thin. I had hubby cut to the size I wanted, then applied with a wallpaper clue the wall paper. Once dry, we cut the edges of the paper and applied a small molding to frame it off. I had the monogram form the nursery that I applied to the center of the monogram. The inspiration for this came form this pin from the blog Welcome to the Mouse House, so I cannot take full credit for the idea, however it is just the perfect way to add a wallpaper without doing the whole room, and of course, I only had the one roll.

I just loved it. Once dry we hung in the room, and then began the move process. Hubby took out the guest bed, and brought her crib into the room, and dresser. We bought a new dresser from ikea for her twin brother, and she took the current one since it was a little more girly in style. The storage case, bookshelf and shelf near her closet to hang outfits was from Ikea along with the rug we used to place up next to the crib.

All in all, I think the room turned out great. We’ve add a few touches since then, including a full pink mini kitchen for play that all of my kids enjoy playing in. She truly loves to host playdates with her brothers in her room for tea.  I still have one project in mind for the other wall, which I will share in a later post, plus what I did with all that craft stuff next week.

Have you recently re done a room, or had to change a room for someone in your family, if so, leave a comment or drop me a line and let me know how you rearranged your stuff!