Girl's Modern DIY Room Makeover

I'm super excited to show you today's "Girl's Modern  DIY Room Makeover".  This fun space is my daughters new room, that I surprised her with for her 13th birthday in January. This room is so super budget friendly, and filled with all sorts of DIY, and how-to's. I even have an awesome give away from Cutting Edge Stencils coming this week!!!

 As I had mentioned to you recently, my husband work was taking on a move across the country. Which meant we had to put our house on the market, and it sold in 24 hours! I was sad and excited, as I packed up the house and made plans to meet up with my husband who had moved in May. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite like we had hoped on my end, and so I was forced to move into an apartment temporarily. 

I have lived in apartments before, when I was younger, and always hated that temporary feeling of it. It's a hard placed to call home, when you can't do much to turn it into your home. Most all the apartments I have ever lived in, did allow you to paint, as long as you painted it back. So I always painted something. Alot of people would just leave it alone, and live with the color to avoid the stress of painting and re-painting...and I totally understand that too! 

So, coming up I will start showing you easy tricks, and budget friendly ideas to making an apartment, or any temporary space....feel more like home.
These ideas are also great for any type of small space. You have to work with what you have, so why not get the most bang for your buck!!

You can see here in this picture below, just how small my daughters room actually is. It was a very awkward shape as well, forcing the bed to go right where it is. The box shape of the room, was cut off by an angled wall, which made it difficult to fit even a desk, since it would interfere with traffic flow. 

 Over the next week I will be posting how-to's on all the project's in this room. One of my favorites, is this upholstered headboard. I only ended up spending $75 to make it! It was a quick and easy project, that is totally customizeable. 

I  also custom made the pillows, to bring in several different patterns and sizes. 

When going with a modern, and colorful theme like this, you really need the room to flow but be mixed together. 

All of the fabrics, including the pink on the headboard, curtain panels, and pillows are from Hobby Lobby. All purchased during a big sale for under $100, for everything. The bee pillow was on clearance last fall at Target. 

For the curtain panels, I just bought 11 yards of white fabric, with irregular black polka dots.  Normally I would sew these, and add a black out fabric to the back. But I didn't want to put in the extra cost If we would be moving, and may not need this size, or amount of panels.
When you close the wood blinds, it blocks out enough of the light, and I didn't really want to give her another excuse to sleep in;)
I also opted not to buy curtain rods since her room would need three. You could use the basic bracket kind, since these panels are always in this position. But I chose to use metals tacks to hang them, which tied in with the headboard. 

Since she loves polar bears, I found her this Sleepy Polar Bear on Etsy, made by A Little World. They have all sort of sweet little pillows, to match any theme or decor! 

Since space was an issue, I decided to make a side table, so I could customize it.  This table cost less than $32 to make. I will show you where to get your supplies, how to make it later this week. 

This colorful table is just the right size for a few things, which helps cut down on all the clutter that a teenager can create.

The porcelain lamp was used from my other daughter's old room, and originally came from target. It's really fun lit up at night, it casts cool shadows on the walls.

 Since clothes actually finding the laundry basket inside the closet, seemed to be a major issue.....I chose to have it front and center...no excuses. Laundry baskets aren't super pleasing to look at, so I chose to use a large floor basket with handles. This also ensures that the laundry gets done frequently as it won't hold alot of clothes. 

There is a method to my madness!!

I painted the bottom portion of the basket, to blend it to the rest of the room, and add a punch of color. A simple fix, and I'll show you how.

These 3 dimensional wall shelves came from Hobby Lobby (during a half off sale, yippee).

Her birthday cake topper I made her was the perfect size to be displayed. 

You can find more little guys like him in my shop on Etsy, Painted Parade.

This weird angled wall, was the real problem area of the room.  The bed stares right at, and the walls are actually very tall in here. I was not about to paint this whole room, and then paint it back at the end of the year. But this small section, was much more doable for me. Keeping it on the existing wall color will save some time as well. 

I ended up finding a really fun arrow stencil at Cutting Edge Stencils. It was a hard choice since they had 7 different ones to choose from. I chose the Indian Arrows Allover Stencil.

The pattern of the arrows went back and forth, and it seemed to be less tribal, or southwestern feeling.

I will be showing you the how-to for this fun treatment in a few days.

 Be sure to check it out, because I'm pairing that, along with a stencil giveaway from Cutting Edge Stencils themselves!! 

See the stencil how-to here.

If your not wanting to doing something so permanent to the wall, you could also try doing this technique on a roll of canvas, and using it like a panel of art. It would even work on butcher block paper, just keep that away from areas that may get wet. 

 This Ikea dresser had some very basic knobs before, but I swapped them out with some painted, glass ones from Hobby Lobby. 

The large peach glass lantern is from....you guessed it, Hobby Lobby.  Hey, you can get some good deals during their sales, and I was on a tiny budget here. 

All of the counter decor (minus the geode) is also from Hobby Lobby. It was at the perfect time with the color palette they were pushing!! I wanted to mix in the bit of gold, here and there around the room. This fun spikey ball is meant to hang, but I rested it on the counter instead. 

Love this punch of color, in something so natural. 

On the long, lonely wall, I added 5 pieces of framed art. Keeping them at eye level makes the wall feel, not so big.

Using large pieces of art, on a wall like this will change the scale of the room. All of the things I have done in here, minus the stencil, are simple and easily moveable. If when we moved, I decided to paint all of her walls, the pieces I have added would still go since the colors are simple, and I stuck to the white.  Apartment living is a place to think in neutrals, but use small pieces, paintable pieces to add your color. That way you can always paint them later to fit your space. 

There you have it, a modern DIY girls room! All this week I will be showing you how to make or paint all the projects in this room. And don't forget about the stencil giveaway!

Stay tuned.....

Find the How-To's Here....

Arrow Stencil Wall Treatment & Giveaway 

Pink Upholstered Headboard With Tacks

Custom Made Turquoise & Gold Nightstand

Painted Laundry Basket, Painted Mirror

Antique Door Headboard & Shutter Nightstands "How-To"

Well, this last month has been filled with all sorts of how-to's, this time of year we are all looking for inspiration, and we all want to know how to do it ourselves. 

So to keep in theme, I'm going to keep the how-to's coming.......

If you missed any of the of the recent how-to's, you can find those here

Herringbone Stencil How-To

Alphabet Wall How-To

DIY Modern Woodland Art

How-To Paint Stone-Faux Travertine

How-To Paint Wood Floors

How-To Paint Cabinets-Secrets From A Professional

Also be sure to check out my guest feature today on Remodelaholic!! How exciting is that?!?
Where I show how-to make my Reclaimed Wood Counters from my kitchen. Stop by and take a look.


And now, on to today's How-To....

Last week I showed you my daughters Shabby-Beach Bedroom, that I finally finished. Thursday I showed you the how-to Herringbone Stencil wall. So today, to finish showing you how her room came together, I'm going to show you how-to make the antique door headboard & shutter nightstands.

This was one of those projects I had in my head for awhile, and just found the pieces along the way. 

I started with the headboard itself, and just recently added the nightstands to it. 

Here is how it all came together.....

At one of my favorite antique stores in town, Iron Side Market, I found a pile of old wood parts. I grabbed what I think were two old table legs, and what appeared to be the top of an old headboard.

I also grabbed this dilapidated door. It had at least 3 colors of paint on it, and seemed to be a pantry door or an old closet door, since it was so skinny.

What I loved about this door was the old lock, I left it just as it was.

I started by scraping off, and sanding down the peeling paint. I could have stripped the whole thing, but I wanted the layers and age. Beware with old doors like these, it is most certainly lead paint! If your concerned, you can buy a lead paint tester at most paint stores for a couple bucks.

 I used 2 small "L" brackets to attach the arched piece to the top of the door.

The leg pieces I attached with wood screws from the back, and a small "L" bracket on the bottom, just to keep it in place.

Obviously this isn't very attractive at this point!!! 

Which is probably why my husband thought I was a bit crazy.

Here it is all painted up, I had to do that right away to get rid of the pukey look.

 Next I used a medium grit sandpaper, and roughed it up. I went down to the cream paint in some areas, and down to the wood in others. None of these pieces are the same color underneath, but that's what makes it look old and put together. 

 So, terrible picture....I know, but this is how it stayed for quite some time. 

Then I finally got some pieces to make the nightstands. Some friends were gutting an old house, and had two sets of shutters they let me have. They were painted black at one time, but were chipping and were very dirty. I took a wire brush and got off the loose bits, and scrubbed it down with some soap and steel wool. Again I didn't want to strip them, and take away the oldness. 

For the shelf part of the nightstand, an old fireplace mantel was cut into pieces. 

 Both shelves were cut the exact width of the shutter.

The next step was to paint the shutters and shelves. 

To hold up the shelves, I used decorative wood brackets purchased from Lowe's for about $4 a piece.

The brackets were painted with the same color as the rest of the headboard.

After letting the pieces dry, I took a palm sander to them. Taking paint off some of the edges, and running it along the rungs of the shutter. 

I let the black show through on these shutters. Like the rest of the pieces, I wanted them to look different, but cohesive with the white paint. 

All the brackets were sanded down as well.

 The next thing to do was to put it all together. 

To get an idea of where the light needed to be hung, and where the shelf should hit, we dry fit the shutter.

Here is the sconce we used, this one is from Target (they no longer carry it). They were about $25 each.

Any sort of sconce would work, though we were going for sort of a beachy vibe with this one. 

We marked where each light would hang....low enough to have the light, but not to high so the light was in your eyes. We needed to drill through the shutter to attach the light to the wall, so exact measurements on both were needed. 

To hide the cord, it needs to be fit between the rungs of the shutter. 

This sconce came with a twist switch, and a plug at the end. Unfortunately the cord wasn't long enough to reach where we needed it go, and the switch wasn't far enough down to mount under the bed. My husband being as handy as he is, cut the wire, and spliced in new wire. If your not ready to mess with the electrical just yet, an extension cord would work too. 

A large staple helped hold the light in place, while he messed with the wires.

So the wire would fall behind the headboard and smoothly fall under the shutter, he routed out a small portion on the back of the shutter. A chisel could help take this part out too, you just need it notched out enough to fit the cord through.

Next we drilled straight through the shutter, and into the wall, and placed an anchor into the wall. This is why it is important not to mount the shutter to the wall quite yet, until all the parts are marked, and mounted. 

 The shelves were the next piece to be mounted to the shutter. 

Earlier when dry fitting the shutter, we determined the shelf would be best, lined up with the bottom of the headboard. The brackets already have the mounts install on the backs, and some wood glue and screws from the underneath held the shelf to the brackets. Once dry, we just had to attached two screws to each shutter, to hang the finished pieces. There really isn't alot of weight put on these small shelves, once these were mounted they were very study.

To mount the shutters to the wall (lights and shelves already attached), we used these heavy duty, self drilling dry wall anchors. We put two on the top, and two on the bottom of each shutter. Start with drilling straight through the shutter into the wall, then you'll have you guide for installing the anchors. Read the directions on these first, they were a bit tricky, with a toggle bar to hold it in place.

The last thing to do, was staple the switch just under the headboard, where she can reach it easily. 

And there you have it! 

Super simple, just some dry fitting and marking so both sides are even.

The whole project, headboard and shutter nightstands cost about $100. Not bad for salvaged pieces!! 

This Shabby-Beach Bedroom, was featured on Work It Wednesday!!