Over the past 2 years, we have remodeled & updated most of our house. Downstairs we added hardwood floors to our master bedroom, so we have no carpet downstairs, but we decided to go ahead & replace the carpet on both staircases & upstairs, including both of the girls' bedrooms. We even had the entire house painted, inside & outside, upstairs & downstairs, except for the girls' bedrooms. We have lived here since 2009 & everything is original to the house, but both of their bedrooms were designed when they were babies, basically before they were born. They had beautiful nurseries with fun paint colors & murals on the wall but both of them were ready for a change. I had always told them that I wanted to wait & update it when they were older so it would last through middle & high school. I started secretly planning it last fall after the girls went back to school, but they had no idea, until Sadie's birthday:
I booked our GC in September to get on his schedule for after Thanksgiving. Then I went shopping with our designer to help come up with a game plan. I was going to give Sadie full control of her bedroom, but I wanted some input on their bathroom, so we decided to pick out 3 different design styles (floor tile, marble countertops, wall tile, etc.) and let them choose. It was too big to wrap it all, so I just covered it with a blanket to surprise her when she came home from school:
I had bought her new pillows, new LED lights for her bedroom & I wrapped a gift certificate for her to have a design appointment with our friend Holly. It didn't take her long to figure out what was going on:
So the week of her birthday, which was the first week of December, we started construction. The girls share a jack & jill bathroom so they both got to design their bathroom together. The entire project only took 2 weeks & the second week they finished was when we were in NY so it was a fun surprise to come home too! I can't believe I forgot, but I did not take pictures of the bathroom before. It was basically neutral, mostly khaki and this time we went with grey & white. Here are the after pictures, when we came home, before we decorated:
That is the view walking into the bathroom from Sophie's room, with her closet straight ahead. They chose this fun grey circle tile for the floor, we kept the original cabinets but painted them white, they chose a light grey marble countertop & then we updated the fixtures & the hardware to polished nickel. I let them choose the fun bubble light vanity & I we bought new mirrors. They did not have cabinet hardware before, but we added it. My other favorite is the shelves we purchased on Amazon - instead of buying a normal towel rack, we bought this 3-piece set with the towel rack on the bottom. I love having extra storage for the girls up high, so it keeps their countertop clean!
Here is the view from Sadie's room:
I love how bright, clean & modern it turned out!
In the shared bathroom, we kept the bathtub, but changed the wall tile & I had a wall shelf built so they would have storage:
They had big, square tile on the floor before with the same tile on the shower wall. This time, I decided to do a smaller subway tile, laid vertically to save money because we splurged on a glass shower door:
The space is kind of small, so I always felt like the shower curtain infringed on the toilet & the girls seems to always make a mess. The floor was always wet so shower doors for the win & problem solved! The bathroom feels so much bigger now & we no longer have a problem with wet floors. We haven't hung any art, but we bought a colorful rainbow bath rug & they have filled their shelves with all of their goodies.
I didn't take pictures before Sadie moved out of her bedroom, but I did remember to take a few shots before they started construction in there. They took down the chair railing & the chandeliers, moved electrical, sheet rocked & textured in a few places & then painted:
Her room was so cute, right? But after 12 years, she was over it. I was really sad to see the flower chart growth wall & Longhorn disappear, but she wanted light & neutral. We offered her color, accent wall, curtains, etc. but all she wanted was Agreeable Grey on the walls with a Pure White trim, which is exactly what we have in the rest of the house. She kept saying she wanted a blank space where she could just change up her colors with pillows, blankets & accessories over time. And she wanted LED lights. That was her most important request! And the only stipulation I gave her, is that we were not buying new furniture, because she already had a really nice white set. Thankfully everyone in our family gave her money & gift cards for her birthday, so we paid for the remodel, she paid for the room decorating. She bought new white bedding, a full-length mirror, art & a hanging chair. She wanted to take her pictures at night to show off her lights:
The lights are really cool - we hung them around the entire top of her room. She has a remote & we loaded the app on her iPad so she can control the lights from either. They can turn any color, she can set up timers, play them to music - they are super fun! She wanted a full-length mirror so she wouldn't have to use ours downstairs anymore, so we placed it in the corner by her closet:
She found this fun lamp, which I loved! Her room is so plain that she needs all the pops of color that she can find:
And she found this art early on, so we used it as the focal point to decorate around:
She was determined to get a hanging chair. I kept trying to get her to get a comfy chair for the corner of her room, but she was adamant about the hanging chair! In her defense, she does read a lot & all she wanted to do was curl up in this chair to read her books:
We went shopping after Christmas & bought a few things, but this is a hard time of year. I told we will probably find more when they put things out for spring, so we will continue to add & decorate as she finds things. In the picture below, you can see her name. Someone made that for her out of wood, but it was white, so we spray painted it to add a pop of color. And she bought new hardware to change out on her bedroom cabinet also:
I have to say, it definitely feels like a more "mature" room and honestly, she loves it and that's all that matters! Let's just hope she loves it enough to last until she graduates because I don't want to spend a lot of time or money remodeling again!
No comments:
Post a Comment