A Blast From the Past - Big Kid Bed

Because I decided to start up this blog almost well after moving into our house, I decided it might be good to do a few posts about work we did before the blog was born.  So we'll call this series "A Blast from the Past". It'll feature all sorts of projects and full room re-dos.  A lot of the time, the "after" is more like a "progress" pic and more work is in store.

Today we'll talk about Sarah's bed which will be part of her Big Girl Bedroom, so its fair game to show you all where it came from!

To start the story off, let's talk about Sarah.  The best sleeping kid ever.  Seriously, once she figured it out, she'd zonk right out at night and sleep like the dead.  And because she never even tried climbing out of the crib, we were more than happy to let her keep on sleeping in there until we needed the crib for someone else.  Big kid bed shopping left me un-impressed.  The beds I liked were super expensive.  So I started clicking around the internet looking for options, and I stumbled upon Ana White's website with plans to build your own furniture.  Back then the website was smaller, but we found these plans and went for it.  It's a pretty straightforward design, which was a good call for a first time furniture building project.  

Step one was sourcing our lumber.  Ana says that the lumber should be readily available, but our Home Depot doesn't carry 4x4s that aren't pressure treated and you really don't want to use a pressure treated wood inside.   We found our 4x4s at a smaller lumber yard, so you may have to shop around.

We (meaning Jason) followed the plans step by step, only making one change to the design: we added a curve to make it look a little more feminine.

Here's the foot board:

Here's the headboard getting painted:

And here's the finished product (spring 2010):

We learned a LOT from this project:

• It's not hard to build furniture, but you do need to take your time - no rushing!  Give glue, paint & primer time to dry. And as always, measure twice (or thrice) to avoid a cutting mistake.
• Think about how heavy the piece will be - this thing is way too heavy to carry upstairs assembled.  I'm glad we assembled it upstairs.
• I think if I had to do it over again, I'd skip the box spring and build a slatted base.  The box & mattress combo is a little high for a kid bed.
• We need to make the bed an inch or two longer.  Everything fits VERY snugly, so changing sheets is sort of annoying. (we'll address this with the move to a big girl bedroom!)
• We need to do a clear coat over the paint.  I will do a little research from experienced furniture painters, but the paint coat feels a bit sticky. (we'll address this with the move to a big girl bedroom!)

We'll be building more furniture down the road (a big bed for Chris?  nightstands?  entertainment unit for the basement one day??) and we'll be sharing when we do!

UPDATE - Link Ups!

A Bowl Full of Lemons

  

Quick Blog Update

Hey Folks!

I'm always tweaking things here and while the blog doesn't look exactly how I want it to look (still searching for a good background), it's coming along!

Recently I've added an "About Me" page (tab at the top), rearranged the side column, and changed the list of post labels from a list to a cloud.  For those who don't know, a cloud is the same labels just varying sizes based on how often the label is used in posting.

I'll hopefully have an update on the Big Girl Bedroom soon!

A Big Girl's Bedroom - Inspiration

Not much to update today except to share a few inspiration pics that are helping us figure out what we want Sarah's new bedroom to look like.  I want it to have a theme without being cheesy, so that when she changes her tune in 2-3 years maybe we can tweak the look of the room by switching out some bed linens and accessories.

So the general theme we're going for is "Surfer Girl"!!  I love this - grown up without being too sophisticated.   She has specified that she does NOT want a pink bedroom.  So I've been clicking around the internet for some ideas and I thought I'd share a bit of what I've been able to find.

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I especially like the last pic here, and that's the one Sarah likes the best.  Light blue with turquoise and orange accents.   She also really likes the waves...maybe we'll incorporate that too!

Check out more stuff on my Pinterest Big Girl Bedroom Pinboard!

A New Crafter?

Sarah came out of her playroom last night with a little container (from the Target dollar bins) that she had glued paper to.  And colored all over it.

She said:

"I just thought it needed a new look."

OMG, she's a little crafter in the making.  I can't wait until we're  Mod Podging together and talking about spray painting random stuff from around the house!

A Big Girl's Bedroom - Getting the ball rolling!

This past weekend was our first weekend at home after vacation and we decided it was time to get started on Sarah's bedroom re-do.

Now for those of you who aren't familiar with our little house, we have 2 upstairs bedrooms and one downstairs bedroom.  When we first moved in, we renovated the 2nd floor and added a bunch of square footage with a shed dormer, but during construction (a lengthy DIY), Jason and I used the first floor bedroom as the master.  Sarah was sleeping in the dining room (aren't we fancy).

So the "back room" as we called it was painted a terrifying turquoise (not a great choice by me, but live & learn, right?).  I put up some roman shades and made them pretty with some brown grosgrain ribbon trim.  And once we moved to our new bedrooms on the 2nd floor, the first floor room became a playroom for Sarah.  Lucky girl!

Here's the room all set up as a guest room with an air bed for some visitors.

A few years later we had a new baby boy and it became clear that eventually separate bedrooms would be best for these 2, so we're moving Sarah into a new big girl bedroom on the first floor.

The first step is clearing out the space and that's what we started doing this weekend.  Unfortunately, it seems that this sort of thing is a cascading process...to clear the room we have to clean parts of the basement (to make room for stuff) and our bedroom (to make room for stuff) and the kids closet (to make room for stuff).  Monday is here and while we haven't emptied the room yet, we have made tons of progress on the peripheral spaces, so much that by the time next weekend rolls around, I'm pretty confident that we'll have a clean slate to begin the REAL work in that room.

Here's a sneak peek at what we need to delve into before Sarah can call it home:

• Patching walls
• Baseboard installation
• Closet repairs
• Door trim
• New doorknob
• Rewiring a few things
• Paint!!!!

I'm tired already!!  Actually I'm super excited to get this room set up for my big girl, and she's excited too!