What a long hard weekend it’s been. So much so, that I plan to make the weekend projects the topic of several of my posts this week…
Weekend Warrior – Part 1
I bought a house in 2007 that was nice, but needed a lot of cosmetic changes, starting with paint, windows, lighting, etc etc etc… At the time, we were expecting our first child and with three bedrooms, we had space for a dedicated guest room. Now that we are expecting a daughter, we decided to lose the guest room and make it into a toddler room.
 When we bought the house... |
 Right after moving in |
 After a long weekend |
From purchase to guest room, we painted the room dark red, put in new lighting (the one in the above photo only lasted a week before we switched to a dark bronze craftsman style light), added new windows, and furnished it in dark wood toned furniture. The room had a nice, dark, solemn feeling, which while nice for sleeping guests, was not going to work for a 2 year old!
So we moved to a blue and white color scheme with a transportation theme. After two coats of tinted primer, we moved forward with a new paint - Benjamin Moore Natura Zero VOC. This water-based paint emits no volatile organic compounds, which means a lot less worry for the pregnant wife. The coverage was great, there was no noticeable paint smell, and the colors are vivid. We chose color #2060-40 Toronto Blue for the lower walls, and #2060-50 Cayman Blue for the upper walls. The new chair rail, windows, casings, baseboards and doors were all painted with standard white, also Natura paint.
| After looking at some pretty awesome stacked beds, bunk beds, and other bed/dresser/combo furniture pieces, we decided that a 2-year old needed to be a lot closer to the ground, and that for $3000, we could get a lot more bang for a lot less buck elsewhere. Most of our chosen furniture originated from IKEA with a bookshelf from Target. |  |
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My wife chose the bedding and window valences and after looking at several different specialty shops, we settled on Target. The colors were similar and the added green element helped to break up the blue a bit. Also, there are Jeeps included in the graphics, so that’s even better. There is a matching night light and (not yet installed) wall decals of cars and other graphics from the design. |
The carpet was chosen from Pottery Barn Kids to tie together the various colors. In addition, we added a new flush mount ceiling fan/light kit from Home Depot (which was so much brighter, we have decided to replace some other lighting in the house too!). To finish off the space – I also switched out brown outlets with white ones, a black light switch to a white one, and three beat up old HVAC registers with new ones. Those are the types of details you don’t hear about on HGTV!
In addition to the toddler room – we also re-did the nursery during the same weekend, so wait for Part 2 for those details!
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