Saturday, December 31, 2016

The Beginnings of a Pink Victorian Bedroom

Last spring I quit my part time job with the intent of getting some much needed work done around the house and maybe think about adding child #2 to the mix after a few months. I put in my 2 week notice and discovered I was already pregnant. Whoops! So much for being productive, I spent my new found free time staring blankly out the window from the couch. That is all said and done now but my free time is spent on feedings so I have have gained negative free time since I quit my job. I did get some non-toxic work done around the house last summer, mainly cleaning out the spare room since we now would have 2 children to house. Sure, they could share (and #1 really wants to share) but who wants the baby waking up the pre-schooler and vice versa?

Cleaning out a spare room isn't a problem for a normal person. Get rid of that futon, the desk, shelf of knick-knacks and maybe some old college books. On my side though it meant cleaning a room which I stuffed everything I didn't know what to do with for the past 5 years - another reason for the kiddos not to share since we weren't REALLY using this room for anything anyways! I had already boxed up some of my trolls here because I definitely am not one to have empty shelves. 

Here is proof the room did indeed look like it was straight out of an episode of hoarders. Minus the rotting food and feces. The trolls are packed away under the eves in the back of my closet and a bunch of stuff went to the garage sale. Though don't go in the basement!

I asked #1 if she wanted to stay in her room or pick colors for the new room and move. She wanted to stay in her current room but paint it pink, get new curtains etc. I told her only one room was getting painted and since the green room was the only bedroom which has been painted in the past 30 years, it wasn't going to be that one. She must have really wanted a pink room because she opted to move down the hall. 

This is the repair work I did do to the walls/ceiling.

The insulation holes were still showing! So those are officially patched. What I didn't do at 7 months pregnant was strip off 3 layers of wallpaper with 3+ layers of pain over the top. Which is OK because the wallpaper does a pretty good job of covering any plaster cracks! The ceiling had fresh drywall on it already so that looks good. 
The room is painted BUT not much else has been done. She also was very specific and wanted her "new" furniture to be Victorian. We went shopping in my parent's garage and since the furniture I grew up with in my bedroom was from that era, we just dug that out.  

I haven't had time to do anything else! This side was my wall of troll shelves. My sewing machine hasn't even left the room. Poor kid. Luckily her sister isn't officially in her old room yet so she still goes back and forth with her toys. Plus she is four so does she notice she has no pictures or shelves up? It doesn't seem to bother her any! She's got some new Trolls sheets and some Hello Kitty Christmas lights hung up as a night light so she's good. She picked out the color herself and I was hoping she would opt for something other than pink but nope, I painted a sample on the wall and she declared "it was beautiful!" so that was it. I was afraid it was going to look like a Barbie Dreamhouse in there but I actually like it. 


Yep, no staging here. This is it! Hopefully some decorating will happen. I imagine myself carefully staging everything, getting some good lighting and taking some fancy photos...oops, gotta go! Someone is having some juicy gas across the room and I'm hoping it's the baby.