Natalie's Big Girl Room Reveal

Ok, first off, I need to be honest here 

and show you what this room looked like before. 

Until recently, this room was the 

guest-room/craft-room/laundry-dump-where-clean-clothes-go-to-die-room. 

Natalie (7) and her sister Olivia (3) 

have been sharing a room since Olivia was born. 

I have been unwilling to part with this extra room of space... 

call it a junk room, call it whatever you want, 

it was always nice having an EXTRA room to pile stuff in, ya know?

Here's the before... (do you feel better about yourself?)

Natalie started asking (politely) for her own room after Olivia destroyed several of her most treasured possession. Now, she handled this pretty well and we talked about forgiveness and loving your sister even when she breaks things, because we love people more than things, etc. BUT I did feel bad and though they may end up sharing a room again at some point, this room was technically free... 

So we let her move in! 

Everything on the walls was either hand-made or purchased at Hobby Lobby. The black and white bedding, rug, curtains and chair are IKEA. The teal paint color we used is Behr: Sweet Rhapsody. We gave some old furniture a fresh coat of paint, spray painted the headboard pink and painted only 2 of the walls.

In case you're wondering what the room looks like on a daily basis, here it is at the first sleepover! The stage was a hit to say the least. 

The stage was super easy and cheap to make. Home Depot sells these light weight 2'x4' sheets of plywood for about $6 each. It was already the perfect size, so all I did was angle off the edges. I had the rest of the wood laying around my garage. But you could pick up a couple 2x4's for a few dollars each. I cut a 2x4 up to create the structure underneath. I bought L shaped brackets to secure the corner pieces and nailed the support structure in place from the top down. I painted it and attached rope light around the base. Because I had most of the supplies on hand, this project cost me less than $10 but if you have to buy the rope lights, that would probably be your biggest expense.

What is nice about using the lighter weight plywood is that you can easily pick it up and move it to another part of the house if you wanted to. I decided this lighter weight wood would be plenty sturdy for several young girls to stand on. Though because it is light weight, I would suggest securing it to the floor or baseboard so it doesn't tip over.

Sorry for the bad, phone quality pictures. This was the first night in her new room, trying out the stage!

Daddy wasn't sure he trusted my stage building abilities, 

so he tested it out for safety purposes...

I guess it's strong enough to hold a grown man as well!

What do you think?