The Interior DIYer
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

#DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2020 – Week Eight!

It’s here! I’m finished! Holy shit. On one hand I don’t think I’ve fully realized I’m finished my One Room Challenge, but on the other hand, I’m looking forward to being horizontal on a couch / lawnchair / bed / under the dining room table / random sidewalk / literally anywhere and not working on any projects in my spare time … for at least a week.

I really am almost overwhelmed at trying to put into words how much this project has meant. At the end of March I miscarried at 12 weeks pregnant. I took 4.5 days off work and then threw myself back into things and wanted to work on something big. Maybe to prove to myself I can finish something and that I’m not entirely useless. For anyone who has been following along with my project will know, I really tore up from the floor up this room as I demolished four layers of ceiling, almost three layers of wall [in places], ripped everything back to the beams, built two stud walls, drywalled, painted, crafted cabinets and finished it off with a thin layer of tears. By myself. No trades people were hired and Robert only helped me drywall the ceiling.

I have really enjoyed sourcing about 90% of this room secondhand. It’s much more of a challenge to find exactly what you have in mind secondhand online, in the colour you want, within a sane budget, during a pandemic, but I tend to like making things exponentially more difficult for myself so why not?

I cannot believe this is what this room looked like just 4 weeks ago:

I’m going to skip immediately back to sharing the now photos as that picture above is giving my anxiety as it reminds me of how much work it took to get to now.

I would strongly encourage you to check all the final Guest Participant reveals here as it is a page exploding with amazing makeovers. We’ve all done incredible work over the past 8[+] weeks from all around the world.

I also want to sneak in one more huge thank you to Bin There Dump That and for their dumpster for my ORC. I 100% would not have taken on such a project if it wasn’t for being able to throw all the demolition drama into a dumpster and completely forget about it.

I ended up going much darker than I had originally planned for my ORC [seen below in my Week One mock-up], but I knew I wanted to have a dark room so I think it’s more of a case that I wasn’t as bold as I’d like to have been in my mock-up vs. the room not turning out how I had planned.

The couch / rug combination very much fed off of each other so depending on the colour of couch I chose, I would either get a pink rug [above] or a gray one [as seen in the final room]. How can you not know what couch you were going to get? That is one of the many joys of sourcing things secondhand! It is unpredictable and you never know what you’re going to get. You plan for things to look a certain way and then the Thrifting Gods laugh in the face of your plans.

My final thoughts on this project; yes, it will be a while before I take on another project of this caliber but I’ve enjoyed pushing myself and proving to myself that I can do it. I also enjoy that this project is now behind me and I don’t have to work on it tonight after dinner until I collapse from exhaustion.

Until the next One Room Challenge.

S O U R C E L I S T :
Wall paint – Onyx, Benjamin Moore
Fireplace – secondhand via Kijiji
Fireplace paint – Coal Black, Fusion Mineral Paint
Gold candle sconces – thrifted by a friend 🖤
Cat portraits – DIY by me, blog post coming soon
Pink Victorian-style couch – secondhand via Kijiji
Gray velvet pillow – Hay Design
Rug – Dark gray Graham rug, Rugs.ca
Large built-in cabinets – DIYed, blog post coming soon
Pink globe – Chapters Indigo
Burgundy curtain – discontinued IKEA
Literally everything else – thrifted, secondhand, found etc.

Week One – Week Two – Week Three – Week Four – Week Five – Week Six
Week Seven – Week Eight

#DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2020 – Week Seven!

The deadline is fast approaching as we near the One Room Challenge final week[s]. Next week is Week Eight and while it is the final week, from that date we have 7 days to submit out ORCs. It’s something I’ve agonized over as the weeks have progressed; will I be finished for Week Eight? What steps do I have to skip so I’m finished on time? NBD, I’m just the only person still at the drywall stage!

I know in the grand scheme of things the ORC is not something I should be loosing sleep over. But have you even been sucked into something that completely took over your mind and to people on the outside, you look to be totally over reacting? That’s what I’m feeling right now. I’m so far into this project that I can’t see out of it. Any time I express my anxiety, I feel silly. But at the same time, this is a big project for me! I mean huge. It’s the first renovation I’ve ever taken on and I’ve done 97% of the work by myself [thank you to Robert for helping me drywall the ceiling even when you threw your back out].

This week I finished installing the fiddly bits of drywall and applied and sanded one layer of mud and tape [so far]. Despite how awkward using a mud trowel, I slowly got the hang of it. My feeble wrists and office-zombie-arms however, are not made for such agility atop a step ladder attempting to mud a ceiling. I took my time and last night sanded the whole room – which has been probably the messiest step so far outside of demolishing the room in the second week.

I decided to keep the original chimney piece in the ceiling. You actually won’t see it once I’ve put the shelving units on either side of the window, but it was something quirky I wanted to keep.

I also picked up / received a few very exciting pieces this week! We first collected a fireplace mantel that I’ve had my eye on for weeks. Unfortunately the person I bought it from was probably a conspiracy theorist and a flat-earther as they were super awkward [they actually ran away from us when we arrived to curb-side pick up and spied on us from around the corner of his house].

A far less creepy addition to our front room is these absolutely gorgeous sconces a friend of mine Alicia, who spur-of-the-moment bought these a year ago in a thrift store and the moment she saw them, knew I’d love them [emotions]. Alicia offered to send them to me in time to include in my ORC and they could not be more perfect.

I feel a bit more relaxed and confident in my decision to give myself a few more days for my ORC deadline. I know it’s the right decision [again, for anyone outside of the ORC bubble, this will all seem dramatic] because I’m back to looking forward to work on our front room vs. my recent and constant dose of resentment. I want to have a beautifully finished room. I want to enjoy the process. I know I’ll be upset next Thursday when everyone else is sharing their final rooms, but I’ll just have to deal with that myself.

As usual, you can see all the Week Seven Guest Participants progress here!

Week One – Week Two – Week Three – Week Four – Week Five – Week Six
Week Seven – Week Eight