Girls' Bedroom Redo: Inspirations

My girls, Endeavor and Superkid, share a bedroom that most sisters only dream of.  It is enormous.  It is very pink.  They each have their own walk in closet.  And their dad built them the best bunk bed ever. 

Let's start with the bed.  I can't find any pictures of their actual bed in our files today, and my own camera is on the fritz.  You are going to have to get by with pictures from the plan the Bionic Man purchased so he could make their beds.  (You can see more beds by Tanglewood Design here.) The Bionic Man built the Maryville model, and we hired an artist to paint the exterior, so our girls' actual bed looks similar to the ones pictured.  Are you ready for this?

Yep, friends and cousins just love sleeping over.  Our girls are very fortunate.  They have no idea how fortunate.  They are very lucky that they have a daddy who can make things like this.  Sometimes I'm jealous of their bedroom.  (But not very jealous, because I was lucky enough when I was their age to have a daddy who could build bunkbeds, too.  And treehouses.)  It is so fun to snuggle and read stories in that little alcove.  I'll post pictures of our version sometime soon, so you can see our version of  this bed.

So, what can I say?  The bed is a keeper.  The perfect thing in an otherwise imperfect space.

Let's talk about the walls.  The structure is good.  This bedroom is under the eaves, so to speak, so one side has a fun slanted ceiling.  But the walls are pepto bismol pink.  And trimmed with a very bright wallpaper border.  Against my better judgment, I gave in to the pleadings of my daughters (who loved pink, especially bright pink) and my husband (who knew what a big job it would be to cover all that pink with another color) and left it the way it was when we moved in.  After all, there was some pink in my daughter's existing bedding.  But every time I walk past their bedroom, I get a nasty pepto bismol taste in my mouth.  Every time.  And an almost-eleven-year old Endeavor is getting very tired of the current decor.  So the pink has to go go go.  I am determined to banish it this summer.

A word of advice to all you moms out there:  big bedrooms are a big mistake.  Big bedroom = big mess.  Big, messy, shared bedroom = lots of tears and fights when it is time to clean that room.  Two walk-in-closets = two more places to walk in and toss your stuff.  While it is fun to have such a large space (it was probably intended to be a bonus room when the house was built) for the two girls to share, it has turned into a second playroom.  So it is almost constantly in disarray.  And don't even get me started on the closets.

Our girls' room is awfully hard to take care of.  I've let the girls have desk/craft areas in their large closets, hoping to contain some of the typical disarray and hide it behind closet doors.  Oh boy, was that a misguided strategy.  Now we have clothes mess and craft mess and stashed toys all mixed together....in two places.  Trust me, something has to change.

One change we are planning is that the girls' will be losing one of those two big closets.  As I mentioned previously, we're thinking about turning an upstairs walk in closet into a laundry room......which means they will need to share a closet for clothes only and I will need to create a new craft space for them.

I've been looking for some good tips on creating bedroom desk/craft space.  Below are some of my favorites.

 

 From Country Living

I like how they used the canopy to conceal this vanity/desk.  Doesn't that look girly?

 

From www.decorpad.com

This is more along the lines of what would be realistic for our space.  I love the organized shelves (using items I could pick up at Target!) and the idea of a long stretch of countertop.  However, that long stretch of countertop scares me, too: will it ever be clean and clear?

Meg who blogs at whatever has an awesome craft room in her house.  There are several things about her room that I could apply to creating a bedroom craft space for my girls.  First of all, Meg's room doesn't look like anything that required custom carpentry.  I'm guessing that she found much of her "modular system" at garage sales and just repurposed it.  But it is so fun and colorful.  Honestly, I think Meg is one of those people that could tie an old rag around a bundle of sticks and we'd all look at it and go, "Wow!  Where can I get one of those?"  Some people are blessed that way.

 

See how she used fabric to conceal what is underneath those countertops?  Genius!

Another blogger I like, Lindsey from The Pleated Poppy, has some great ideas for a craft room/desk space, too.  Take a look at all of her before and after shots here, but I'll show you the ones that have given me some ideas, below.  

 

 

Let me just say, this is not supposed to be a complain, complain, complain kind of post.  I am incredibly grateful that we have this kind of room and the means to make it a delightful space for both my girls.  But I'd love to hear some of your ideas for ways that I can inexpensively organize and beautify their existing space. 

Laundry Room Redo: Inspirations

The Bionic Man and I are a realtor's worst nightmare. 

Realtor:  So, what we have here is a darling ranch.  Perfect starter home.  You can see the carpet was only recently installed.  The kitchen has all-new appliances, which will stay.

Me:  This kitchen is really cramped.  I'm not crazy about the layout.

Bionic Man: (Begins tapping the wall, listening for studs, and eyes the ceiling.)

Realtor:  I'm sure a smaller table and a fresh coat of paint would do wonders.  Now, if you'll follow me down the hallway to the bedrooms.....

Me:  You know, really all we would have to do to fix this kitchen is knock down a wall here and pull the sheetrock down from the ceiling--expose the beams, you know.

Bionic Man:  Yeah.  Yeah, that would work.  Only I think that moving the basement stairs would be the better way to go.  We'd need to move them over to the other side of the house.

Me:  And as long as we're moving the stairs, we might as well add on a second story.  What this house really needs is a second story.

Bionic Man:  Definitely, it does make sense to just go ahead and do that.  Adding bedrooms up there would really open up this level.  It's absolutely what this house needs.

Me:  (to Realtor) We love it!  We love this house!  We can totally do something with this.

Realtor:  Great!  I really thought this was the house for you.  Let's go back to my office and write out an offer.

Bionic Man:  Well, you know, I should get some quotes first from a contractor, first.  And have someone come take a look at this foundation to see if it will support a second story.

Me:  And we should probably go look at some ranches that have been bumped up, just so we can have an idea of where we want to go with this.  Do you have any listings of ranches with a second story addition you could show us?

Yep.   We're no fun for realtors.

The Bionic Man and I are really good at coming up with creative solutions for design dilemmas.  The Bionic Man has the mechanical skill to do much of the handywork himself.  And I'm always willing to cheer him on and hand him tools.  So....we usually like everything we see, since we're convinced we can change any "minor details" that get in the way of a house being our dream house.  Like the placement of the stairs....

 No.  We are not moving.


What we are doing is considering a renovation project we'd dreamed up even before we made an offer on our current home.

The only thing we don't love about our current floor plan is the laundry room.  The space itself is fine.  Big enough that our front-loading, large capacity washer and dryer can share the space with Hunter the Dog.  The problem is the location:  near the kitchen (okay), far from the bedrooms (very bad).  I want my laundry room to be as close a possible to where the clothes go on and come off.  Which makes a lot of sense, considering the length of time it takes me to fold the laundry and put it away.....might as well only have to step down the hall in your bathrobe to find something to wear, as opposed to dashing down the stairs, past multiple windows, and through the main living areas to find something to wear from the laundry room.  I think I've made a valid point, there.

We want to move out laundry room up to the second story, near the bedrooms.

We've been talking about doing this for a while--even before we finalized the purchase of our current home.   Originally, our plans were big.  Very, very big.  Bump out a gable and redo the roof, big.  That was when I was campaigning for a large, bright, spacious laundry room, with custom cabinetry, a window seat, and an island in the center for folding clothes and wrapping gifts.

Like these, from Country Living:

 Or these, from Better Homes and Gardens:

 Fortunately, before we undertook such a project, we had a realtor come and give us a market analysis on our home.  This gave us important information.  Namely, that we'll never recoup the cost of a major renovation.  Not in a million years.

So, our plans have toned down significantly.  We figured out a way to get the upstairs laundry area without changing the existing footprint and/or roofline of our house.  Currently, the plan is to convert one of the large walk in closets up there into a laundry room.  There will be no messing with the roofline, no window seats, no central islands.  Just a place near the bedrooms for washing and folding laundry.

I'd love it if you'd point me in the direction of any terrific ideas for making small, windowless laundry rooms efficient and lovely.  Here are some ideas I found already:

from www.kevinandamanda.com

This laundry room was painted such a bright, fun color, and they really maximized their space with those upper cabinets and baskets. 

 from showandtell-sausha.blogspot.com

In this laundry room, they came up with a really terrific way to create storage and elevate the front-loading machines.  They made that custom riser, themselves.  Impressive!

So, what do you think?  Do the advantages of having an upstairs laundry area outweigh the disadvantages of that laundry area being in a smaller, windowless space?  If you were a prospective buyer, what would you think?  Would you think, "Wow, I have two options in this house for a laundry room.  Upstairs or down.  Cool beans!"  Or, would you think, "What the heck were these people thinking, using this closet as a laundry area?" 

Oh, and one more thing.  One of the advantages of moving my washer and dryer upstairs will be that I'll have a 8x10 room, right next to my garage, that will be vacant and available.....for my dream mudroom!  Factor that in, and take a look at these mudrooms:

These two from BH&G look like they actually get used:

And now a couple of mudrooms that Hunter the Dog could feel at home in:

From Chicago Home, note the doggy shower in the lower left.

 

 From Log Cabin Home--Hunter would need a bigger cabinet!

Holland and Spring

Notice my new header?  Yep, I found another gorgeous scene from the Netherlands to grace my blog.


You may have noticed that I use my blog for all kinds of things.  My blog is the blogging equivalent of a casserole: I throw in whatever I feel like at the moment and serve it out with a smile.  One day I'm complaining about laundry, another I'm bragging about a rare moment of craftiness.  One day I stand on a soapbox, another day I sit down and dish on our latest trip to a doctor's office.  And every so often I discuss Gacky Sage vs. Silver Sage. 

I began blogging to sort out and record the way I felt about some of the challenges in my life: children with special medical needs, the death of my youngest daughter, my evolving roles as wife and mother.  In fact, I named my blog after an essay written by Emily Perl Kingsley, "Welcome to Holland," which illustrates some of those challenges so well.  (You can read it here.)

Looking back, I can see that I have done a lot of sorting and recording.  But along the way, I think my blogging has begun to accomplish something I didn't expect: it documents the fact that despite some unanticipated challenges in my life, I've continued to read and write and do laundry and plan menus and go on vacations and sew things and make dinner and make cupcakes and give my husband  Valentines and give my kids haircuts and do things with friends and laugh at myself and paint my kitchen and.....so many other things.  I've continued to live and find joy in living.  There were some dark days, when I wasn't sure doing all that could be possible.  I'm so, so, grateful for the gift of time, and for a loving Heavenly Father who has a plan for all of us.

If you are living through some dark days yourself, take heart.  Or, as we like to say at our house, "Hold on Tight and Choose the Right!"  There are brighter days to come.

Maybe your life isn't going the way you expected, right now, but stop, look around you, and see if you discover some beauty in your own landscape.  After all, "...Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts." 

Today, in the spirit of Emily Perl Kingsley's essay, I want to share some of the things that make spring in real Holland wonderful.  I'll leave it up to you to find the parallels in your own personal piece of "Holland."

From www.krolltravel.com:

Few people realize that tulips did not originate in Holland. They were first imported from Turkey in 1554 as collectors' items. By the 17th century, the speculation in bulbs became a mania.

Merchants were so obsessed with their beauty that they would pay thousands of dollars for a single bulb. The tulip even gained a stock market value and fortunes were both made and lost.

Tulips are still a big business for Holland. Bulb fields stretch for miles across the countryside. During the peak season, a rainbow of vivid colors carpets the earth for as far as the eye can see.

From http://www.infohub.com/Articles/traveluv5.html,  Holland, Everything's Coming Up Tulips:

Add to this picture the fabulous annual mid-April Flower Parade of the Dutch Bulb District. Consisting of approximately twenty bloom-covered floats, each covered with about 100,000 flowers, it is similar to California's Rose Parade in the U.S., except that this parade consists of floats covered with bulb flowers and is an all-day, on-going trek from one town to another. The gorgeous procession travels from Noordwijk, in the heart of the blub fields, to Haarlem, about 24 miles (40 kilometers) away. 

 There are more than 10,600 miles (17,000 km) of designated bicycle tracks around the Netherlands.  The landscape is generally flat, making it ideal for bike rides.  

Wouldn't it be great to see sights like these?  Windmills and tulips?  Imagine doing so while you pedal along at a leisurely pace, on your designated bike path!  (Am I making you want to go on a bike tour of Holland, right now?)

Just think of the pictures you'd come home with after a trip to Holland in the spring!

 Did you know that besides tulips and windmills and Rembrandts, Holland has diamonds?

 The diamond trade in Amsterdam attracts millions of tourists and buyers from around the world.  Many famous diamonds were cut and polished in Amsterdam. 

Let's go back to Rembrandts.  Holland does have Rembrandts, and this is one of my favorites:

The Night Watch

One thing I didn't know--but should have guessed--is that Holland has tulips named after Rembrandt!  They are very stripey and striking, like this:

 From Emily Perl Kingsley's essay, "Welcome to Holland":

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

 I hope you have a moment to find and enjoy the beauty in  

your own unexpected journey, today.

This post has been linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky.

Spring Inside My House

*Still experiencing technical difficulties with my camera.  

If my pictures all look like beaded board paneling, it's not just you....or your screen.  Sorry!  

(Good way to see how beaded board would look in my house, though.  Hmmm....)

I spent Saturday morning getting my house ready for spring.  And I spent Saturday night cleaning up the mess that I made!  It is sooooo nice to have a clean kitchen floor.  We were long overdue for mopping.

I tried something new, this year, on the mantel.

Other years, I have had an Easter tree there, like this one.  (This year I moved the tree to our our kitchen bar.)

 I have a lot of fun switching out my mantel decorations for different seasons and holidays.  Remember this?

Well, now it looks like this:

*Again, I apologize for the poor picture quality!  Maybe a new camera is in store for my upcoming birthday?  

Bionic Man, are you out there?  Are you reading this?  

For spring, I rearranged my apothecary jar collection around a vintage window.  


The window came from our first home, which I now refer to lovingly as our "Connecticut Cottage." (With a name like that, you'd think I spent weekdays at my Park Avenue penthouse, wouldn't you?)  Our first home needed lots of updates and renovations.  This sweet window was being used as the top half of a corner built-in hutch that had to be removed during the remodel.  The hutch was darling, so the Bionic Man disassembled it carefully.  We could never find another place to put it in the house.  I had our movers box it up and ship it halfway across the U.S. when we moved to our current home.  It's been waiting out in the garage for me to decide what to do with it, ever since.


Well, on Saturday I finally decided:  it should go on my mantel!  Only problem was, it was too tall to sit with the arch on top, as I originally intended.  But that's okay, because I kind of like things to be a little quirky and imperfect.  Besides, the door handle provided the perfect spot for hanging a spring wreath.

The vintage window is painted kind of a muted mustard color, which--I admit--really isn't one of my favorite colors.  I've always intended to paint it white, but obviously I've never got around to that.  When I realized that it actually complimented the colors of eggs in this wreath, I decided sometimes procrastination really pays.  Add that to the fact that I still haven't finished my Marathon Painting Project, so the wall is still Gacky Sage, and you have a room that happens to totally coordinate with this wreath.  Wow!  (Thank you Christmas Tree Shops, for selling this egg wreath last year!)

One of the fun things about my spring mantel is that nothing I put on it is new.  Like the window and wreath, I was able to repurpose decorative items I already had.  With the exception of the moss in the tall apothecary jar:  I bought a bag of that at Home Depot to put on some of my potted plants, and then decide to throw some in a jar.  Very organic, eh?  Not to mention very cheap.

There are a couple of things I like to incorporate every time I decorate the mantel.  This little Willow Tree figurine is one of them.  The balloon the child holds has the word "hope" written inside.  I love that.  See, I used it in my winter mantel, too:

One of the reasons I like apothecary jars is that they give me so many fun options.  The same jars can be used in different ways, filled with a variety of objects.  This spring, I've filled them with nests and eggs.  (And moss.  Can't forget that moss!)  Apothecary jars have to be the most versatile decorative elements since......um......since I don't know what. ( If you want to learn how to get your own collection without spending a mint at Pottery Barn, go here.)  It is sooooo simple to just replace the fillers for one holiday/season with fillers for another holiday/season.  You don't need to spend money on those fillers, either.  I used marshmallows for Valentine's Day.  Spools of thread, old buttons, rocks, seashells, little collections.....find a unifying theme (or not) and toss them all in your jars.  

I really like the way the birch bark candle looked with everything else.  And my little woodland critter.  My mantle looks just the way spring looks outside my window, right now: lots of brown, lots of texture, and just a few muted colors.  


I carried this brown and green and natural yellow theme over to the bookshelves next to the mantle.  

I really like this picture frame.  Found it on sale at the Christmas Tree Shop right before St. Patrick's day.  I think those twigs around it are the bomb.  The organic, textural, spring-is-coming bomb.

I love to pull out this little sign every Spring.  I'm looking forward to spending time in my garden, again.

My children are back in school now, after a fun-filled and relaxing spring vacation, which we spent at home.  I've got a few big projects to work on this week.....I may--just maybe, keep your fingers crossed--be able to surprise the Bionic Man again with some painting!  Wish me luck!

I'm linking this post to:

Mantel Party @ Nesting Place