The Interior DIYer
Baby

Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™ reveal!

I’m very excited to finally share some photos of Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™! Yes, it’s taken me *checks calendar* 13 months to take photos of her room since sharing my moodboard and layout plans for it last year. And while it’s a pretty tiny bedroom, the layout and design packs a punch and still works as efficiently as the day she graduated to her Big Girl Bed™. I had a lot of fun thinking of how to make this previously brown bedroom a perfect room for a curious little girl.

See something you like? A complete SOURCE LIST is included at the end of this post.

Cora’s bedroom is TINY. For most of these photos I’m standing as far away as I can in an opposite corner of her room. It’s so small that there’s no room for built-in storage and it’s just wide enough to fit a bed, as seen below [you can also see more of my 3D mock-ups here!]. I really do love a challenge so I took my time with creating the best layout [as simple as it seems] and worked from there.

I sourced a gorgeous spindle-type bed secondhand on Kijiji for $80 as well as an armoire perfect for all her clothes [and that would fit her dormered room] for $50 [via Facebook Marketplace]. The bed was pine and didn’t have a great finish so I wasn’t guilty about painting it in Fusion Mineral Paint‘s ‘Coal Black’ [after doing a mock-up of it in SketchUp and seeing it would look *chefs kiss* against the green walls].

Speaking of walls! I gathered a huge amount of inspiration for Cora’s room from her dollhouse. I matched the colour almost perfectly [‘Agaves Green’ by Sico Paint] and painted half the walls. When I say I, I mean Robert did all the painting. I was in peak pregnancy nausea with Zelda at the time and wanted to sleep and puke so Robert did all the tedious painting #Blessed.

I wanted Cora’s room to feel sweet, creative and earthy with a sprinkle of odd. I can’t remember what I searched for in Etsy to find them, but when I found Grannet Home‘s mushroom linen fitted sheet and pillow case I knew this was the pattern that was going to tie Cora’s room together. Its sweet birds, mushrooms, beetles and and berries were just gorgeous and a perfect mix of earthy and odd.

Going with the wall colour and bed linen, I built the room from there. I filled it mostly with pieces Cora / we already had. I tried my best not to smother the room in burgundy or pink and I think it worked out well.

The irony is that I took these photos the day before doing a total bedroom reshuffle and upgraded Cora to our spare bedroom to turn this room into Zelda’s bedroom, so this room doesn’t even look like this at all anymore.

I had a lot of fun with Cora’s room, but I already have HUGE plans for her new bedroom, and even more amazing plans for Zelda’s version of this very room.

SOURCE LIST:
– Walls painted in “Agaves Green” by Sico Paint
– Bed secondhand from Kijiji
– Bed painted in ‘Coal Black’ from Fusion Mineral Paint
– Sequin gold and white pillow thrifted from Value Village
– Pink pillow gifted from Cora’s Nana
– Mushroom linen bedding [fitted sheet and pillowcase] by Grannet Home on Etsy
– Pink bedsheet from IKEA’s DVALA bedsheet set [including fitted sheet and pillow case]
– White embroidered blanket from Mariposa Design
– Grey faux fur blanket from !ndigo [light gray option no longer on their site]
– Not pictured, but used: IKEA’s LENAST mattress protector
– HUSVIKA twin mattress from IKEA
– Armoir found secondhand on Kijiji
– Vintage pink porcelain knobs via Firstfinds on Etsy
– Brass Cappa curtain rod by Umbra
– Sanela velvet curtains from IKEA [olive green curtains are since discontinued, welp]
– Irish landscape painted by Cora’s talented Nana
– ‘Cora’ embroidery by Hextrovert
– STORM book by Pieces by Georgie
– ‘C’ scrabble-style artwork DIYed by me years ago
– Isild medallion bird portrait tray by iBride
– Felted piggy faux taxidermy by Felt Fauna by AC
– Shelf with peg hooks found secondhand on Kijiji [then painted in FMP’s ‘Coal Black’]
– Gray EKET cabinet from IKEA used as a bedside table
– TARNABY table lamp from IKEA
– Miniature dollhouse dollhouse DIYed by me

Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™: before – moodboard and layout – after

Bedroom

Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™ makeover – moodboard and layout

I’m quite excited to share my moodboard and layout plans for Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™ makeover. It took me about 6 months to get my head around a colour scheme, theme, and design for her room, not to mention working around the physical limitations that came with her dormer sloped ceiling [see what I mean in the before photo’s of Cora’s room here].

I took a huge amount of inspiration for Cora’s room from the dollhouse I updated and gave Cora for Christmas 2018. Mainly, the shade of green paint I used [pictured above] set the tone of her bedroom makeover.

I matched the green craft paint to the shade “Agaves Green” by Sico Paint via Rona hardware store [I feel I have to write hardware store as poor Rona has the misfortune of also being a slang term for the ongoing global pandemic. In case you needed clarification, I am not painting COVID-19 throughout Cora’s bedroom].

I decided early on that her room wouldn’t be entirely green, but half of it, similar to the little hallway I designed and coffee-stick-bead-boarded for Cora’s dollhouse [above].

Once I had the basic design figured out, it was time for the layout.

Cora’s bedroom is tiny. Like, hugely tiny. And it has the added obstacle of a dormered ceiling, plus no built-in storage, so I had to be creative [and cut-throat] with what furniture I added to her room. I measured her room and created a layout in Google SketchUp. Since there was little-to-no wiggle room when it came to space, I had to be certain the pieces of furniture fit and worked. Oh, and did I mention I sourced the furniture secondhand? If you’re new here, you may not know that I like to give myself a challenge.

So here is the basic layout I decided upon for Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™ makeover, using an armoir and bed I sourced from Kijiji:

There was very limited options for furniture placement, so unless Cora was prepared to sleep in a bean bag or stand in the corner like a vampire, there was only the above layout option.

I also took a great amount of pleasure getting the perfect armoire for Cora’s room; I looked online for a few weeks and the armoires I found were either too wide, too deep, or too tall, which were immediately ruled out because of the dormered roof. I took my time and found the perfect armoire for $50. It fit perfectly, and I actually love the shade of wood it is, so I won’t be painting it. Just updating the hardware.

This actually won’t be Cora’s room long-term. Once Cora’s 5th birthday rolls around, baby will be 6 months old and it’ll be time for her to move into this room. Cora will be moving into our spare bedroom later this year, and just wait until you see what I have planned for that room. It will essentially be my dream childhood bedroom. No spoilers.

SOURCE LIST
– Walls “Agaves Green” by Sico Paint
– Isild female bird tray by ibride
– Needle felted pig by Felt Fauna by AC
– Bed and armoire sourced secondhand via Kijiji
– Bed painted in “Coal Black” from Fusion Mineral Paint
– Mushroom linen fitted sheet and pillowcase by Grannet Home
– Vintage porcelain pink knobs from Firstfinds

Bedroom

Cora’s Big Girl Bedroom™ makeover – before

For Cora’s 4th birthday we wanted to surprise her with a proper Big Girl Bedroom™. Previous to updating her bedroom, Cora was still sleeping in her Stokke crib, which we managed to get 4 years out of from the 0-3 year range [converted into a very low bed with one side removed for the last year so it wasn’t super-cribby].

Since moving into our house a year previously, we had done nothing with Cora’s room since. Her room is seriously tiny cozy and quite brown. It wasn’t very ‘her‘ and since all the furniture in her room was made from wood, it was just too many layers of brown for this spirited 4-year-old’s bedroom. With her 4th birthday fast approaching [and another lockdown impending] we were glad to have a fun project to focus on.

I feel it took about 20 seconds to photograph the before photos of Cora’s bedroom since her room seriously is tiny. There’s no storage incorporated into the design of the room, so it just about fits a bed, a storage unit and a few toys on the floor.

I quite like challenges like this because it means I have to be creative with a space. I’m not going to lie, it did take me a few months to get a plan in mind that made sense and made the most out of her tiny room. And looked good. And I did a mock-up on Google SketchUp, which I can’t wait to share on Monday! I’m hoping to share that along with a mood board as well as what inspired this makeover.