A Girl’s Paradise

In the 6 years I have had little girls I have never really decorated their rooms. I always was hesitant to paint walls in a house or apartment that was not ours so I would get a cute bedspread and then call it good. I did hang a few photos on their wall in our last house when I was nesting like crazy in preparation for our baby Penny, but was about the extent of my concern over making sure my little ladies had a decorated pad. I think it’s so great to let them have a place in the house that they feel like is theirs. I wanted it to be fun and colorful but sophisticated enough to grow with them and last for more than a year or two.

I totally understand some people’s desire to let their kids call all the shots about how they want their room decorated. I started out asking my eldest daughter what she would like for her room decor. Her answer? “Gold walls…. And pink”……Yeah, after that I pretty much cut the girls out of the process and just hyped them up about whatever I wanted to do. No worries, they are easy-going chicks who pretty much love whatever I suggest.

One thing I did know. There had to be pink.

I know- Gag. But I was determined to bring their favorite color into the room in a way that was modern and fresh and not reminiscent of Pepto Bismal.

Here is the before of what this room looked like when we bought it.

Then we moved in the bunk bed and a few pieces of furniture and called it good for the next 9 months.

The walls were bisque. The baseboards were bisque. The outlet covers and light switch covers were bisque. The doorjams were bisque. The closet doors were bisque. The vertical blinds were bisque. The bedroom door was bisque. It felt like my sweet little girls were living in a small dirty box.

And then there was the shelf that broke the camel’s back.

My eldest daughter needed a shelf. She sleeps on the top bunk and she needed a place to put things like a box of tissues to blow her nose with in the middle of the night, and a place to put a drink of water, and a place to put her special things so her sisters can’t play with them. The girl needed a shelf and I kept promising her I would put one up. But being the pragmatist, I reasoned that I didn’t want to put up her shelf until I painted the room first.

So one day I just grabbed some white paint we had leftover from another project in the garage, threw down some drop cloths and tapped off the hardwood floor and went to town. You may think that getting a bisque room back to white would be easy. Not so. This sucker required THREE coats of white paint on the walls, the door, and the trim to get back to solid white.

Disclaimer: many of the following photos are iPhone photos so I apologize for the poor quality!

By then I had already decided that I was determined to use up our leftover grey paint from our man cave and dining room. We had ended up ordering enough to do two coats and only needed one coat in each of those rooms so we were left with quite a few leftover gallons. At first I considered gray walls and a pale lavender ceiling, then gray and white stripes and a pale pink ceiling, and then finally- gray and white stripes with one pink stripe at the top. Then I bought a fantastic settee on craigslist to use for photo shoots and figured that I had better find a place for it in our house or my husband might murder me. The hot pink in the fabric was perfect to pull out as a hot pink color for the stripe. I wasn’t sure how the rest of the colors and style of the couch would work with the gray and white stripes but I hoped it would all work out somehow.

Taping commenced….

…and continued…

…for weeks on end…

…with no end in sight.

The measuring and taping portion of this project was so time consuming! Seriously- overall the room took 2 months to complete, but the taping alone probably took 3 weeks of working on it whenever I had a few minutes.

Then the gray paint went up and when I started slapping on the pink I knew it was perfect. Sidenote: I am SOOOOOO glad that I listened to the tutorials I looked up on painting striped walls and used Frogtape. The blue tape I used to tape off the hardwood floor totally let white paint seep through in some places. If I had used it for the stripes I would have been having a freak-out when I peeled off the tape and saw not-so-crisp lines. The Frogtape worked like a dream and only allowed a tiny bit of bleed in a few places.

Peeling back the tape and instantly loving the stripes!

After many many weeks of painting, the walls were done and I was fed up with decorating, so we moved back the bed(which had been residing in the middle of the room and barely allowed room to squeeze around it to paint or for the girls to play in their room at all) and I didn’t lift a finger to finish the room for a couple of weeks. But the beautiful new walls inspired me and I couldn’t leave the room alone for long. I grabbed these curtain rods at Home Depot on clearance for $10/each. They were the perfect size and I loved the shape but the cream color was all wrong so I spray-painted them with a little ORB spray paint and they were perfect.

Then while Mark was out of town last week I got a burst of “get-er-done” energy and hung the curtain rods and made a trip to Ikea for the finishing touches. New white duvet covers for the beds, and white curtains, a couple of hot pink throw pillows(for $1.99/each!). The other throw pillows were ones I already had stashed away not knowing where they would find a place in the house. I also had the big letter ‘R’ from years ago.

And then, I finally hung the shelf that started it all.

The room is by no means done. I would like to add some patterned curtains to bulk up the window dressings and add some more green or yellow color. I just have to find some that will add to the space without competing with all the other patterns going on in there. I also need to hang some frames and art. Zoe is insisting I find her a “Z’ since Reese has an “R”. The dresser needs to be sanded down and painted and I would love to have the whole closet built out by a closet organizer company to make the best use of the space.

But this is where it is now and where it will likely stay for awhile. I’m so glad I can sit back for awhile and the girls have a pretty and fun room to enjoy.

I think they like it?