Our daughter is starting 2nd grade this year. She has been asking me when it is time to turn her room into something magical. I was not allowed to tell her or show her some ideas I had for her room. It should be a surprise for her, she said. So here you can find an idea for a kids bedroom. The past few months we’ve been working on several home projects. After our bathroom and the master bedroom, it was finally her turn!
Step-by-Step-plan
Our House
Right before the COVID-19 pandemic started, we sold our 1,200 sqf. house and bought our current 1,900 sqf. house close to town, but with a feel of being out in the middle of the forest with lots of privacy. Little did I know, that I was given lots of time to work on home projects. And I LOVE IT!!!!!
Being Dutch and having a tight budget, I tried to come up with creative ideas to make the best out of each area in our house. The goal was to make it comfortable, fun and to bring nature into the house. Here you can read more about it!
Ideas for a girls bedroom
Pinterest is THE source for tons of ideas. I was looking for something clean and bright, neutral, but also fun. I had several things I wanted to incorporate back into her room, like the bed and storage shelves, but revamp everything else. I realize now, I really love making things and that helps having a small budget.
For example: Years ago I let our oldest, J. (pronounce they/them) when they were about 7 or 8 years old, build an IKEA desk all by themselves. It was a great learning experience and they had a great working space for years. Now they’re in high school and in need of more space, so the desk went to our youngest, M.
This little girl is not so tidy and more rough with her possessions. In other words, the desk has seen most of its life. After making a chair for my bedroom reading nook, I got so inspired in making her a new desk.
Note: As I’m about to finish this post, there are 3 projects I’m still working on in her room. I’ll post those later. A pompom rug, her desk and a bed organizer. So check back later for these finished projects.
The walls, paint and wall paper?
Going over several ideas on Pinterest and my daughters interest (which is mainly pink….and I do NOT like pink, right mom?), I wanted to make one accent wall and the rest light grey with white trim. I started with the accent wall.
After doing some research on how to build your own shiplap wall, which I was planning to make initially, I was not really ready for that. Even though, they say, you can do it for cheap. I still need a miter saw to cut the pieces and help, to put the wooden pieces up on the wall. For now, I kept it simple and when I feel brave enough to tackle this job, I can still do it.
I just bought shiplap wallpaper.Measure your wall and buy the right amount of rolls. I needed 5 rolls ( I have some left over for other projects like the inside back part of an open closet for example). I cleaned the wall with KrudKutter first and took the vent and outlet covers off the walls. Then I started at the bottom and left an inch on the left, the right and the bottom side. I cut the sides off with a box cutter and ruler later and hid the extra inch behind the baseboard.
If you can, let someone help you, because the wallpaper is self-adhesive and sticks easily to everything (hands, other parts of wallpaper and hair). I actually think it looks pretty good.
I cleaned the rest of the walls and took the covers off, then taped the sides of the walls off with painters tape. For the walls, I used “Ironed Gray” from Dutch Boy.
The windows: blinds or curtains?
After I painted our master bedroom, I realized I didn’t need to paint the windows white, which I had planned to do, but the dark color I used, brought out the wood color more and made it cozy and warm looking. So I left the wooden window frames, honey brown.
In this girls bedroom, I didn’t like the wooden window frames with the Ironed Gray, so I continued with my plan to paint the window frames white (Antiqued Lace from Dutch Boy, which I used for the walls in our master bedroom). Immediately it looked so much fresher and cleaner.
The next thing were the window shades. I looked online for Roman Shades or bamboo shades, but OMG, they were so expensive. I almost bought paper shades, to have at least SOMETHING in the windows. Anything was better than the red curtains I had before. They always fell down from the loose rods every time I wanted to open or close the curtains. And they collect dust!
Then, we went to Menards to buy the flooring and I found simple, but sturdy, white window shades for a good prize. They were easy to install and our daughter can easily reach the stick for opening and closing the shades.
The floor.
One of the reasons to renovate both rooms of our daughter and next door of our son, was the carpet. When we took the carpet and the underlay part out of the room, they looked new underneath, but somehow the top didn’t look good anymore and it was hard to keep it clean, not to mention, allergies!
We decided to go with water resistant self adhesive vinyl floor planks from Menards, called HSC, Woodland Creek.
The furniture and decorations
Metal frame bed
Our oldest child, J. got a metal framed bed when they were about 4 years old. It was time for a big kid bed. The bed was black metal at the time, but I spray painted it red, because that was the accent color of the room.
When we came into the new house, our oldest got the loft area. It had enough room for the queen bed we had for guests in the other house. But now we thought J. could have it in the loft bedroom. The red metal bed was now the big kid bed for M. I spray painted it creamy white. I couldn’t get it right, though. The paint drops were visible and so much paint was wasted. Now I decided to brush the paint on. I got Rustoleum Enamel Paint.
Reading nook
M is getting into reading books more and more. I still had old rectangle baskets from IKEA to put the books in. One basket has English books and the other has Dutch books. I still hope she’ll get interested in Dutch and be bilingual on day. She is our third and I noticed is getting much harder to keep the Dutch language going in our house. Read more about that here.
I found this cool Teepee tent on Etsy. It is neutral, so it is easy to make it more colorful with blankets, pillows (or personalized pillow cases) and stuffed animals. Little flags came with the tent. The poles are made of wood and it was very easy to install.
5 more cute decoration ideas for a girls bedroom
In the end, the costs were low. It was mainly paint for the walls, the trims and the bed, the faux wall paper and the floor. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Hello everyone,
Welcome to my Crafty Dutch Girl blog! Grab a cup of “koffie” and browse through fun blog posts about our Dutch family expat life in the USA, Dutch history, Dutch recipes, Dutch things to do in the USA and all kinds of crafts and activities. Don’t forget to connect with me for new ideas! “Groetjes en tot ziens”.