A Room of Her Own

Here’s a guided tour:

I didn’t want to repaint or change the window treatments, so I used yellow as the main color in the room, but added in purple and green from a quilt I inherited from my grandmother but have never used. I hung this behind the bed using a dowel rod and brackets I got at Lowe’s. I was going to buy a curtain rod for this, but they were around $25 for the length I needed, so my mom suggested I just buy an unfinished, wooden rod and paint it white. This saved me about $13. The duvet cover and pillows were also done on the cheap using sheets. You’ll see the clip framed art on either side of the windows. That project couldn’t have been easier. Also in this picture, note the drawers underneath the bed. Our house is sorely lacking in closet space, but luckily I had an old chest of drawers in the basement that I had planned to throw out because the frame was really rickety. Instead, I had a brainstorm to add casters to the bottom of the drawers for under-the-bed storage. I filled these with Olivia’s games and toys and she loves that she can roll them out so easily.

For more storage, I purchased fabric storage cubes in coordinating colors from Target and filled them with toys. Then, I had some unfinished shelves with black brackets in the basement, which I repainted. I spray painted the brackets white, and rolled purple paint onto the shelves. Then, using a pencil eraser, I created polka-dots on the edge in yellow and green. The lower shelf is within Olivia’s reach; the higher one holds things we wanted to display, but didn’t want her to play with such as her fragile piggy bank and picture frames.

Here’s the play area…toys, a mini-kitchen, and a puppet theater are all accessible. We found the puppet theater at IKEA. I just set it on top of a library bookstand that was already in the room and put her puppets inside. The shelf below holds Olivia’s favorite nighttime stories.

We still needed a changing table of sorts for Olivia, so I just topped the existing dresser with a changing pad. One of the top drawers holds diapers, wipes, and lotion. Her name is spelled out with letters covered with scanned sections of the quilt that hangs on the opposite wall, and the lamps were a flea market find that just needed shades.

So, as promised, here’s the budget breakdown of what I spent on re-purposing the guest room into our little girl’s room.

TOTAL $131.88

Obviously, if you start with a completely bare room, you won’t be able to get away with spending this little, but if you want to try an exercise in re-purposing what you already have, you’ll find you can save a TON! I should add that a couple of area rugs would certainly have pushed my budget to its maximum of $250, but my mom had a huge, bound piece of carpet she wasn’t using anymore and it just happened to be green. Happy coincidences are often part of the process when you open your mind up to creating a unique space filled with “use what you own” pieces and accessories.

Finally, all of this was accomplished with a toddler in the house! You’ll see the projects’ nap ratings on the linked pages above…they are all totally do-able! That’s the Home Made Modern way…