Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Bedroom-Redo

I don't have time for a long blog, but I wanted to post pictures of the kids bedroom that we remodeled while their were at the grandparents for a week!

did you catch that...

yeah...a WEEK...one whole glorious week...
I will say that I started missing them around day 3 1/2...




oops...wow, I was still remember that glorious kid-free week...


anyways, what do I do with my Beau when the kids are gone for a week...
a fancy dinner...
a nice hotel...
walks on the beach...
....
NO...
I talk him into remodeling the kids bedroom...
that proves that he really truly loves me!...
next kid free week is all his...
and I promise I will play video games with him all week long...
(not that I have to because he probably will never read this blog and will never know that I promised him that!)...

sorry...for that tangent...
so anyways...here is the before and afters of the room....

Before 'closet'
random-unusable 'closet' in the kids room...
this closet at one time was about 3 feet deep and some previous homeowner took all that depth and created stairway in the hallway up to the loft/playroom...
which is great because we need a stairway to the playroom, but now this closet is useless!!!  
it's only 1 foot deep and they nailed in nails to hang stuff on...um...thanks...
I'm pretty sure the only reason this 'closet' was kept was so that they could claim this room as a bedroom for resale/tax purposes!...
well, we built an actual closet in this room, 
so this um, 'closet' was no longer necessary for the resale/tax purpose...
and the only question remaining was, 
"what to do with this randomly small unusable closet?"...
I've been dreaming and planning on turning this into a built in bookcase from day one...
YEP, day one...
not the day we moved in...
but the day we looked at the house 5 1/2 years ago!

my dream becoming a reality!
the 'closet was actually wider than the door and went back/length ways another 1 1/2 feet...

After ...built-in bookcase
I am SO VERY happy with the after...this is what I have been dreaming of for 5 years!

Before...nice huh...

the electrician made some really nice holes in the paneling 5 years ago when he was re-wiring this room and we had run out of $ to have the dry wall guys at the time fix it...
so we did what most "fixer-upers" do...
we've ignored it for 5 years...
and tried to hide it 
using pieces of paneling from other projects....
and random wooden ships...
oh, and let the spiders take over...
my hope was that their webs would start to look like fabric drapes and end up hiding the whole mess...


anyways, 
using scraps of drywall from the closet we built and then left over wood pieces and trim from other projects we covered up all the holes and textured the fake paneling that was up there to make it look like drywall...

note...bunk beds can me used as scaffolding...
note...bunk beds built for children and purchased from WalMart might not be the safest scaffolding
note...I took this picture of Beau painting using the bunk bed as scaffolding turned and set the camera down only to hear a loud crash, I had missed him falling thru our makeshift scaffolding by mere seconds!


After...

love that we turned an eyesore into something that looks like it was meant to be...all that white trim is just covering up nasty paneling with holes hacked into it!
maybe one of my favorite parts of this remodel is that it was free...
how was it free
1.  we sold stuff we no longer needed on craigslist (the kids bookshelves that they didn't need now that they have a built in book case, and 2 dressers that they no longer need now that they  have a closet)...
2.  we are so very cheap GREEN that we up-cycled and reused material from previous projects so we had less material to purchase...

oh...and the biggest expense was the wood for the bookcase shelves, and the reason that was so expensive was because I did the classic, measure once and have Home Depot guy cut all the shelves the WRONG size, 6 inches TOO short!!! so we had to buy more wood and after measuring 3 x's I had the Home Depot guy cut it the right length this time...

and just because I love you guys...
and I know how hard it is to get a good green, not too minty or too lime'y...
I will share the color...it's "Restful" by Behr @ Home Depot...
and the white is "Pot of Cream" also by Behr @ Home Depot... (this is our white, we use it on EVERYTHING white in our house, the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, the trim, molding and windowsills, bookcases,...etc...and it's great to keep a gallon around for when you need to touch something up!)
and a side note, I like to pick colors based on their names, for two reasons, 
1.  I'm silly
2.  It helps me remember the color years down the road...
I still remember the name of our kitchen color & our living room that we painted 5 years ago because I also LOVED the name of the colors...can't remember the name of our bedroom color or bathroom color for the life of me because I was so sad that the names were stupid!


7 comments:

Joni said...

Looks GREAT guys! So glad no lives were sacrificed for the remodel. Love that you spent very little as well. We recently did a similar thing for the boys room, except it's still incomplete. We sold stuff from our basement to make the money we needed for the new bedding, dresser, fabric for curtains and paint. We actually made more money than we needed and padded our budget with the leftovers :)

The Smith Hotel said...

Looks great! I bet the kids were excited to see their new bookshelf when they came home! I love built in bookshelves!

Jody

The Fowers' Family said...

It looks awesome!

Linda said...

It looks absolutely great! I love the 'restful' green walls! What did the kids say when they came home? Did they know you were upgrading their room?

Lisa Lee said...

Love it...genius redo of the tiny closet!

Tabitha said...

Looks great! Love how you are always finding creative and cheap ways to decorate/remodel.

Krystle said...

Looks awesome!!