Bigger Bedrooms

One of my requirements for buying a house was that it had to have decent sized kids' bedrooms.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think kids need huge spaces to themselves.  I just prefer that there is room for more than just a bed and nightstand.  My kids like to play, read, draw, and do all sorts of things in their rooms, and when the bed takes up more than half of the space it just feels cramped and unwelcoming.

When Cory and I looked at this house I immediately knew the bedrooms would be a problem.  Two of them were SUPER tiny and a third was a decent size but had two dormers and was narrow.  It made for an awkward space that would be tricky to fit furniture in comfortably.

Two tiny rooms (each had a full-sized bed that ate up most of the floor space):

 

Awkward dormer room:

There was a dormer on each side of the narrow closet.  I don't believe there was even a hanging rod in the closet; there were simply a few shelves.

I believe the previous owner used the counter for scrapbooking.

Awkward, right?  I mean, where do you even put a bed?

So when we created the open upstairs study area for the kids we did it so that we could expand the two really tiny bedrooms and still have a "hallway" to get to each room.  The rooms as they were just didn't make sense for us.

THIS makes sense for us.

By taking the few feet from what was the hallway and adding it to the two tiny back bedrooms we ended up with two really nice sized rooms for Tessa and Clara.

Months and months of demo, wiring, plumbing, plaster repair and drywall installation transformed these spaces dramatically.

This is now Tessa's room!  She has some neat angles in this corner because the other side of the wall is the top of the main stairs.  I saw the angles as an opportunity to do a fun paint accent.

Professional painters did all the priming, ceilings, and main walls.  I decided to paint the accent colors myself after learning that the painters charge $100 for every color they use.  I had eleven colors in the upstairs alone.  WHAT???   No way was I paying an extra grand for paint.  So I nixed several colors entirely and got to work painting.

Gray, yellow, and white has always been one of my favorite color combos.  I knew that I wanted to do Tessa's room in those colors.  It was a no-brainer.  All the walls in her bedroom are a pretty, soft gray except for the corner wall which is a cheery yellow.  I'm going to do a stencil treatment in white on the opposing wall.

This room is SO MUCH roomier, brighter, and happier than it was before.  Can you believe the difference?  And it's not even done!

Clara gets the room beside Tessa's.  Her's started as a tiny, dirty, red room:

Underneath that threadbare carpet was this:

Lovely, right?  This was actually what we found under all the bedroom carpets.  There was hardwood around the perimeter and carpet in the center.  The carpet was so saturated in dog pee and who knows what else that the padding just crumbled apart.  I can tell you that that was fun to clean up.  Heh.

Anyway, her room picked up the same amount of space from the hallway that Tessa's gained.

One difference between the two rooms is that while Tessa has a relatively small closet due to it being on an angled corner, Clara's closet ended up being quite spacious.  Before it was a small closet with a set of built-in shelves to the left.  The extra square feet from the hallway ended up doubling the size of the closet.  However, you can see that it has a window in it.  That window was in the last bedroom at the end of the hall that had the Williamsburg-esque built-in bed.

Not to worry though.  The roof line outside that window was raised for the addition so the other side is now a back stair case.  The crew just removed the window and drywalled the space to make it complete.

Her walls were painted a soft white, and I painted the window wall a pretty teal color that is in her bedding.  The opposite wall will have a geometric stencil treatment in chocolate brown.  I'm SUPER excited about these stencil walls!

I'd say it's a big improvement already!  

It's truly amazing how much a few feet of space can do for bedrooms.  These girls will be quite happy here for a long time.