New House Before & After: Kids Rooms

This weekend Mark put the finishing touches on the kids' rooms!  As I mentioned previously, painting their rooms was actually the first thing I did in the house, but other than that we didn't do much more than move their furniture in until recently.  A couple of weeks ago I shifted focus to finishing up their rooms!


First up: Jack's room.

Before

Ugh.  There was a good bit of work to be done in here.  Obviously, no self-respecting Columbusite would live in a *ichigan themed room :P

Those yellow stripes were bordered by pieces of trim, so first I removed all the decals, then had to rip off all the pieces of trim, of course wall came with it so thhhhheeen the walls had to be patched and smoothed where the trim was.  -_-

During

The kids look so much smaller!  I guess this was nearly a year ago now... 

After

Fresh paint (color: Valspar Schoolboy Blue), the canvas, rug, bedding, bookshelf, letters (I added spray paint so they would look better in his new room), and curtains all came from his old room.  The growth chart was a gift, and we recently added the headboard and shelf for his Hot Wheels cars.

He's been asking for a shelf for his cars since he knew he would get input into his new room a year ago and this was the finishing touch we added this past weekend, he's pretty excited about it!  Me too (decor + storage/function = win!)

Ahhh, so much better!




Next up: Molly's room

Before

Luckily, Molly's room was in better shape other than being (poorly) painted a very pink, pink.  Of course her favorite color is purple, so that's what she chose to paint her room.  I patched a few dings and holes here and there and we were ready to go!

During

I was definitely laying on the floor, hot and exhausted, and the kids joined me.  The three of us spent a very long spring/summer together in this house last year.  They had a lot of "picnic" lunches on floors of rooms in various stages of completion while watching movies on my laptop.  We'd bring food, a small bag of toys each, and my laptop + movies and spend the day working on the house.  I think we're going to have a much more fun time here this year!

After

New paint, new bed and bedding, and bookcase.  The growth chart was gifted, the letters, rug, and the little rainbow cloud on the wall were all from her old room.  One of the curtain panels was also from her old room, but we had to purchase a second since she had a smaller window at the old house.

Two weekends ago we finally got rid of the crib turned toddler bed, and packed up all the diapers that haven't even been used for the better part of a year, so that we could get rid of the changing table, and we moved in her new big girl bed!  I kind of love her bedding and secretly wish it was mine :D (Target!)  We'll definitely be adding something more to her room, probably a real dresser or something along those lines as she has plenty of room and will probably need the storage (she's a mini-fashionista!), or a toy box that we actually already have on hand...  But, it's feeling pretty done for the most part!



It feels GREAT to have two more rooms checked off the list!  Next up: we'll be working on our downstairs half bath, and the 3rd upstairs bedroom, which is currently storing a bunch of stuff I'm pretending doesn't need to be unpacked, but is destined to be an office.

New House Before & After: Master Bedroom

I've shared our family room and kitchen transformations, now it's time for the master bedroom!

Painting all the things was of priority when we moved.  Empty rooms are easiest to paint for obvious reasons, but knowing that all the walls needed painted meant that we couldn't really settle in to any of the rooms in the house before the walls were painted as furniture would just need moved around again for painting purposes so painting was a task that I tackled as quickly as possible both before and after move-in day.

Painting the kids rooms were the first tasks I accomplished once we took ownership of the house. Because they're smaller it's harder to move the furniture around to get to the walls so I really wanted to get it done ASAP.  I know this from experience as I had to paint their rooms in our old house with furniture in them.  What ends up happening is having to shift the furniture around as you paint unless you have the ability to move it out completely.  It's just not fun.  So, their bedrooms were painted early and first.

After their bedrooms I tackled the kitchen project because it was very important to me to have a functional kitchen, call me crazy!  We moved in late June, I was painting the family room, on my birthday (happy birthday to me...), about 2 weeks after that, and theeeen it was time to shift attention to our bedroom.  I was hoping to get it done before we moved in, which obviously didn't happen, but I also knew that it was large enough that I could move furniture to the center of the room and work around it if necessary, which is what I ended up doing.  2015: the summer I was perpetually covered in paint.

Before:

Paint samples on the wall :) 

As you can see we had a good space to work with, all that needed addressed was the ugly 90s sponge paint, which was clearly very intentionally and professionally done O.o

Prior to taking possession of the house we were under the impression that these walls were actually wallpapered and I was dreeeaaaaading dealing with wallpaper removal (Been there. Done that. Don't want to do it again.)  It was a huge victory when we realized it was just paint!


After:

New paint (color: Sherwin Williams Sensuous Gray, it's gray with heavy plum undertones), curtains, headboard (I love LOVE our new headboard, pictures definitely don't do it justice.  It's so pretty in person!), bedding, wall decor (the sconces were from our old house, the canvases are new), and the final item we just picked up this weekend is that pretty, oversized leaner mirror, which I love! Although we painted the room and hung curtains more than 6 months ago, it's only been in recent weeks that we really finished up the decor.

Thankfully it's feeling pretty done now!  Mark still has a couple boxes that need unpacked (side eye) and then we'll have a pretty good sized open space/corner so maybe we'll add a fun chair or something down the road, but feeling pretty good about the space for now.

We also made a quick update to the kitchen and added some blinds to the bay window.  We've known for a while that we wanted to add some.  Now that it's staying light out later we needed to make a move.  Due to the level of the sun when I'm making dinner it was practically blinding me on sunny days, and it was starting to bother us while we were actually eating now that it's light out even later! Not that I'm complaining about the sun shining in the evenings, but it added motivation for us to get this task accomplished!

Kind of hard to take pictures of blinds, but you get the idea.  Also, as you can see on the center pendant light above, an unnamed child recently decided while not being watched for 3 seconds that it would be a good idea to try swinging those pendant lights, which then crashed into one another, which shattered one of the shades.  Now all of them are going to need replaced so that we have a matching set.  The light was one of the few things in the kitchen we didn't need to do anything with when we moved in.  One step forward, two back -_-  But the blinds are up!

It's crazy to think that this time last year we were in the process of finalizing the purchase of our house.  Right about now we were scrambling to try to get the necessary things done so the house could be somewhat inspected and in required condition for closing.  It was a very stressful time to say the least.  All worth it, but things are much more enjoyable this year!