Purple/Blue Girl's Bedroom

My mom and I recently re-did my cousins Morgan's bedroom while she was on vacation!

She turned 10, and her room needed an update for her age.  She had lots of pink and purple in her room previously, and since she's a bit of a tom-boy we didn't want the color scheme to be too girly.

[before]

Our biggest surprise to her was the sliding barn door.  She already had a small door in the corner that goes to a small finished attic space used as a playroom that her dad built.  We thought it would be so cool to have a door that hides it like a secret passageway.

Morgan picked out her bedding, which had lots of black, gray, and purple tones.  We based the room off of that and added some sparkle here and there.

[before]

She requested that we paint some circles on the wall with different colors, so we made a wall that looks as if we splashed circles of different sizes across it!  

Some of the circles are mirrors attached with 3M stickies, and a few are zebra decals, and a couple are pizza pans used as magnet boards.

[before]

We made the sliding barn door out of a 30" flat hollow-core wood door from HomeDepot with a sliding door track attached to a painted 2x6.  She already had a guitar that we hung on a wall guitar display hanger.

The chandelier and mirror are from Hobby Lobby

The window treatment is hung higher, close to the ceiling, to make the window look larger, the ceiling look higher, and to act as a headboard.

[before]

[before]

We also got a plexiglass shelf from cb2.com for her books she reads before bed.

There are hooks on the wall by her door for her backpack and jackets.

[before]

[before]

Love you Morgie!

Check out her older sister's room we did 2 years ago HERE!

Floating Media Cabinets

One of Matt and my latest projects we had to get done before Greta arrived... 

I drew the cabinets on SketchUp first to make sure I had all the measurements and joint details figured out first.  Here is a front view of the linear floating media part and the vertical coffee station that sits on top of the left side by the kitchen:

Here's a back view that I used to figure out how we were attaching them to the wall.  I knew french cleats would be more stable for the weight than screwing through the cabinets into studs.  Plus this way- you don't see any screws or hardware.  It was trickier to figure out the boxes though and allow for the back details with all of our cuts.  The only thing that changed is the square holes shown on here- became round circles in slightly different spots for the chords to go through:

We designed and built these media cabinets for our living room since I couldn't find anything out there that was what I wanted for the price I wanted to pay.

 We started with cabinet-grade birch plywood sheets we cut to size, and bought a small router to cut each of the grooves and joints so each piece fit together perfectly.

I got 1/4" thick plexiglass from our local hardware store and did a paint test-patch to decide if I wanted the sliding doors to be back-painted white, grey, or sanded for a frosted look...

We decided on one sanded and one white:

The smaller media cabinet put together and dry-fit to make sure it all works the way we hoped!

I stained each piece and then we glued each joint together and used a nail gun with small nails just to hold the corners so the glue would dry where we wanted it.

Finished:

[after many months of weekends and nights used to work on this monster!]

 We also added hooks on the coffee station top shelf to hang mugs from and attached power strips below the cabinets for the chords to plug in and be more hidden:

Also shown against the stenciled wall I posted about a while back:

Wall Stencil

I recently bought a wall stencil from Royal Design Studio online to paint a few walls in my home.  If you use the code from Young House Love: YHL10 you get 10% off!

At first, I couldn't decide between these two versions of the Moroccan circles:

  

The bottom one is more graphic and retro, and the one on the top is more delicate and subtle.

Eventually, I decided on the top one because I wanted more of the walls to be covered in the new flat paint, and less to be the original high gloss white that was existing.

[Flat paint hides imperfections in the walls better]

Here's what it was like when we first started:

It takes a long time because the stencil is only so big and you have to keep lining it up with what you last painted (after it dries) and filling in the gaps:

In this photo, you can see when the light hits it how the shine changes on the glossy paint from beneath:

It took a while for me to be satisfied with the color.  The subtle neutrals are always the hardest to get right.  I wanted it to be a flat white on glossy white, but when I opened up my flat pure white- it looked beige and on the wall too.  I didn't want that, so I mixed in some flat grey I had until it was a subtle light grey I was happy with.

Almost finished, hadn't gotten the top of the wall yet- but now you can see the difference it makes!