Major craft project necessitates longest blog post to date!

I  have not attempted a major room overhaul in about 8 years.  Sure, I do bits and pieces of decorating every year but to take a room and dramatically transform it is not something I do a lot.

So, this project has me a bit anxious!  I am taking the man cave slash den of our home and transforming it into a little girl's room.  Everything had to leave the room. The walls had to be stripped bare of pictures, the curtain removed, and the furniture moved out.  The walls had to be painted, new curtains sewn, bedding purchased, decorations crafted, purchases stealthed from all over the internet in order to keep within budget.  And the transformation, almost complete, is dramatic!

I won't post the before pictures as they are embarrassing.  You just have to imagine a room cluttered with music magazines, instruments, bicycle gear, books, and random clutter.  Walls dinged up from guitar cases.  Children's art taped to the walls.  The carpet hidden underneath teak furniture and dark persian rugs.  The exact opposite, in every way, of what a little girl's room should look like.

It all started with this quilt.  I went a little gaga over it.  The bed, a queen, will be the centerpiece of the room.  A queen seems like a big bed for a three year old but we wanted to keep the flexibility of still having a space for visiting relatives to sleep.  So, the bedding has to be spectacular, what with the bed taking up so much space.  The room is only 10 X 12 but the amazing quilt, Betsy's Dolls, from Pottery Barn Kids, is perfect!  Isn't it adorable!  The quilt has so many colors no one will get bored and the dolls are not so cute that she won't love it for years to come.

So, after ordering custom shams and pillows from Etsy, and finding the perfect white with lavender ribbon sheets from PBK, I moved on to the walls.  What color?  I knew I wanted to do a happy yellow but it took a few visits to Sherwin Willams to sort it out.   I have to say, they are very helpful and have great customer service.  And their online tools are great.   We ended up settling on Optimistic Yellow, at 50% strength, so it is half as dark as this color swatch. 

I chose the Duration paint because it is low VOC  (low stink means fewer toxins to breathe) and it only needs one coat.  True to it's word, it is the best paint I have ever used.  It went on easily and is not nearly as stinky as regular paint. 

Next up, my friend and neighbor sent me a link to a wonderful decorating site.  Oh curses!  So many great ideas I had to use some.  Lucy and Company do amazing work!  I cannot afford it nor do I even live near them but, thanks to Etsy,  Ebay, and Michael's craft store, I can make some of them work on my own.   Aren't these room pics delish?

Did I mention we have my daughter's name in wooden letters already?  I love this desk and shelving unit setup and will be searching far and wide to find something cheap we can transform to get this look. 

Beautiful!  

I found a seller on Etsy to make me tulips and daisies like these! I will paint and mount them on my own as a sort of mock headboard, just like these.  

I also found a lavender gingham bedskirt from PBK on Ebay and a twin bed sheet set to match.   The bedskirt will fit the queen-sized bed, but the sheet set I will use to make a valence and to cover a bulletin board that I got at Michael's.  If I have fabric leftover, I plan to make a long bed roll pillow like in the picture above.  Such fun!  And I love the old desk transformed with paint.  My friend will help me to find a desk that will suit our needs and then I can paint it to match.  Being as little one is only three, we are in no hurry.  It could even be a small table instead.  I love the covered stool, in the pic of the desk, as well as the bulletin board with the hand painted frame.  Finally, an old table transformed with paint into a bedside table!  What a fun and funky idea.

So many great ideas just from one website!

The first stage of this room transformation will be done this weekend and I will post pics then.  What fun!