Girls' Shared Bedroom: Progress Continues

Painting the girls' bedroom made the biggest impact in the space. I feel like everything from here on out is just a matter of adding the finishing touches.

In our initial mood board post for this room, I mentioned that I had wanted to install a picture ledge around the room in order to divide the two wall paint colors. When I really got to thinking about it, I could just imagine the girls trying to hang off of it with their full body weight and managing to tear it off the wall. Bye, bye hard work. Then, I thought the simple color division would do just fine.

Until this happened...

Please excuse the flash orb...

Do you see the little blue line? I guess the paint was still a bit tacky when we blue chalk lined the room to help us tape straight lines for the two-toned paint effect.

So, we decided that we would go ahead and add a piece of moulding after all. We're still forgoing the picture ledge idea, though. I think it will add a subtle touch of architectural interest to the room. Maybe the blue line incident was meant to happen so that we'd be forced to take the easy fix route? (Easy for me, not so much for Justin who made the cuts and installed the moulding while home alone with 4 kids.)

This is the stage we are at right now. The moulding still needs caulked and painted but least we're still making progress! Slowly but surely...

Tell me, what mistakes have you found just easier to cover up?

The Girls' Bedroom is Painted!

New bedding. Check! Window/closet trimmed. Check! Room painted? Check!

Hallelujah, the girls' shared bedroom is finally painted, and it's been the most dramatic change yet. It never ceases to amaze me what a little paint can do to a room.

Without further ado...

Do you see the very subtle two tone effect that we created on the wall? The top section is plain pure white, and the bottom is Valspar's Comet Dust.

I catch myself sometimes just peeking into this room because it's so light and bright and makes me happy. :)

We wrote this post about trimming out the window, but we did the closet too.

Here's the closet before:

And after:

And the whole room "side-by-side" before and after:

 

Still on the to do list for this room:

•  Molding to separate the two colors
• Individual barn lights for reading
• Hanging Art
• Coral accent pillows
• Additional accessorizing

 Now, who thinks I should paint the nightstand similar to the color in the mood board?  Should we leave it as is? Or are there other color suggestions out there?

Additional Girls Bedroom Posts:

Bedding Options
Selected Bedding
Girls Shared Bedroom Mood Board
Installing Closet and Window Trim
Girls Bedroom Gets Painted
Covering a Mistake

Installing Window Trim: A Basic How We Did It Guide

As mentioned in a previous post, our house has no window or door trim. Anywhere. And the windows and doors/closets look like they are missing some oomph. So to fix that, we installed some! Oh, what a difference it makes!!

In true DIY fashion, our first step in the process was to do a little Pinterest browsing. Naturally, right? We came across this pin and determined it is the exact style we wanted:

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This is what we started with...

Unfortunately, I couldn't grab a good before picture of the whole window (too much light!), but this gives you an idea of what a blah mess surrounded the window before.

Materials Used:
- 1x3 pine to fit measurements
- standard wood screws
- paintable caulk
- wood putty

Step 1: Measure

Measure around the window. This is the portion of drywall around the window, in our case, that the trim would sit on. These are my fancy room and window measurements. Our window measures exactly 5ft x 40in.

Step 2: Cut

Next, you will want to take the window measurements and determine at what length to cut your wood. The top and bottom pieces are easy. Just take the width of the window, and add on 2 times the width of your trim. (In our case, it was 40in + 3in + 3in, since we used 1x3 pieces for trim.)

The sill or "stool" piece is a little bit harder. we wanted this piece to stick out just a little bit farther than the outer trim to give it a little bit more of that craftsman style. We added an additional half inch to each side of the sill/stool to achieve that look. (46+ .5 + .5)

You will also want to measure the depth of the sill to help notch out the pieces you need on either side. Unfortunately, we didn't grab a picture of the shot, but you can see what I'm talking about here:

From the outside edge, you will want to measure in the width of your overhang and the width of the wood. (.5in + 3in) Use a square and mark out your cut. We used a jigsaw in order to cut this portion of the wood. (This Old House does a pretty good job of explaining this process.)

Then measure the side pieces. This will sit on top of the sill piece, so it will measure the same as the height of your window, minus the depth of your wood. Even though we used 1x3in pieces, the true depth of the wood was only 3/4. (5ft - .75in = 4ft 11.25in)

Step 3: Attaching Your Trim

For this step, we used standard 2in wood screws. Before screwing into the wood, we pre-drilled holes in our trim pieces prior to driving the screw. This helped to prevent from cracking/splintering the wood. I do believe though, since the trim on our windows is purely cosmetic that you could get away with using a product like Liquid Nails or other construction adhesive to simply attach the boards to the wall. This would eliminate the step of pre-drilling and any fear that you may have about damaging the window itself. (We're not experts, this is just what worked for us!)

Step 4: Caulk, Wood Putty and Sand

Caulk the gaps and putty the screw holes. (You can find some good tips for caulking trim at Remodelaholic.) Once the putty dries, use a fine grit sandpaper to smooth out any inconsistencies. 

Step 5: Paint!

Paint your new trim!

We did a fairly sloppy job of painting our trim since the rest of the room will be painted soon. (Who wants to "color" inside the lines when you don't have to, am I right?) Actually, we had already started the process of painting the walls when this picture was snapped. 

And here's a glimpse at the chaos that comes along with us painting...

Can you guess which Mood Board we chose based on that picture? More on that to come next time!!

We're so happy with the way the trim turned out. There may not be many beautiful "pin-worthy" pictures in this post but at least we are making progress!

Girls Room: Revised Mood Board Options

Since we bought the bedding for Skylar and Clara's room, it's been full steam ahead on making over their bedroom space.

Of course, the first thing that I had to do was come up with some more mood board options. Since my original mood boards for this room just weren't going to work, I've drafted these:

Option 1 - This has a navy feature wall with the remaining walls painted in a light light gray. On the walls above the beds, picture ledges are hung for frames and other trinkets. We would also like to add individual lights on each wall so the girls can have their own reading lights. I absolutely adore the barn style lights! My concern here is that the accent wall will make this already very small room appear even smaller.

Option 2 - This option is a two toned room with light gray walls on the bottom and white on the top third of the wall. I would plan to keep the picture ledge to help divide the color transition. Pretty much every thing else stays the same! I've swapped out the barn lights for a different color option here.

Besides picking out paint color(s), we also knew that we would have to trim out the window in this room. None of the windows or closets in our home have trim around them and it makes them look extremely awkward, like you can just tell there is just something off. We have addressed the seemingly naked window issue and will talk more about it in the next post.

If you follow on Facebook, you might be able to guess the direction that we're headed, but please weigh in with your opinion! How do you feel about dark accent walls in little rooms?