Our First Home - the beginning

In the beginning of February 2013, my family of 5 (the youngest just a few days old) closed on our first home.  It was built in the late 70s, needed some work, and a gang of sloppy painting monkeys had been hired to paint half of the rooms in an array of awful dark colors. . . If my doctor had seen me moving boxes and furniture about the house by myself just days after giving birth I'm certain she would have tied me to a chair (or worse).  But who can sit still when you have just moved into the first place that is actually yours?  (I didn't injure myself, but I certainly do not recommend engaging in this sort of physical labor so soon post partum.)  I wanted to get our belongings sorted so that I could begin the house make-over that I had been planning (via Pinterest) for months prior to closing (yes, it took 6 months to close.  Short-sales are evil.).  I began in my daughter's room.  It was one of the worst.

In my haste to begin, I forgot to take a "before" picture of the room, so I grabbed this one from the online listing for the house.  What you can't see here is that there is purple slopped on the ceiling, the white line is just where a piece of masking tape had been placed during painting, and that when all of these posters were pulled down some of the paint went with them. . . also, the walls were filthy and there was writing all over the inside of the door.  Suffice it to say, it needed work.  First, the peeling paint needed to be dealt with.  We decided that we would have to go ahead and peel off the bits that were already peeling.  So with a putty knife I scraped off everything that was loose.  My husband then cleaned the walls with TSP and I went to work patching with spackle.  Since the walls were dark, in bad shape, and glossy we put a coat of kilz over everything.  A word of advice... if you plan on living in the house while doing this, buy the low-odor variety... we didn't, and I learned my lesson.


I had been loving the look of rooms with teal walls, pink furniture, and black and white details on Pinterest.  So, I went that route.  I decided to also try out the Chevron pattern that I continued to see on decorating sites.  It was so edgy!  If you check out my Pinterest boards you may recognize a few other projects in the room.

Most of the things in this room were done seriously "on-the-cheap."  The black curtains were found in the clearance section for dirt cheap and the valance is basically a long tutu from cheap tulle.  The bunting is made from scrapbook paper and yarn that had been laying around unused in my craft supply bin for years.  The desk was originally another clearance find, though at this point the top had been damaged and it needed some touch-up work on the front.  Dollar store contact paper to the rescue!  The wall mounted shelves are sporting that dollar store contact paper as well.  The shelves themselves used to belong to one of those $15 small bookshelves from Walmart.  Unfortunately, the bookcase itself didn't survive the move, but being the forward thinking hoarder recycler that I am, I kept them just in case.  The dresser was a refinishing project (see the page about that in the furniture section), and the frames on top were garbage finds that I spray painted with the leftover paint from the dresser.

I love the chevron, but I don't love the whole room yet... I feel like it needs something else, but it's definitely a lot better than before.  I've decided to come back to this room later with a fresh look after working on some other rooms first.