Boy's Bedroom Makeover - All Things Automotive

Hi Y'all!!  Can you even believe it's been 3 months since I've posted anything?!?  *sweeps cobwebs away* When I looked at the date of my last post my jaw dropped.  I could not believe so much time had passed.  It certainly didn't seem that long.  But life has been speeding along and our summer has been filled with a growing baby (she's 6 months old now!), swimming lessons, trips to the springs, family visits, shower curtain making, attending Hubby's softball games, church get-togethers, etc.

But....onto today's post.

Let me preface this post about my son's room makeover by saying that this room has actually been done for well over a year and I've never shared it. *hangs head in shame*  I won't bore you with the details of why it never got shared, so let's just go with...I'm sharing it now.  : )

This is what his room looked like for the first year that we lived here.
Poor kid.

 

As you might recall from some of the other room makeovers I've done so far, most of the walls in this house were a weird peachy orange color done with flat paint that had absorbed years of dirt and stains.  This room was no exception.  He had a hodge podge of furniture and not enough toy storage.  His bed was handed down from my daughter when she got a double bed.  The headboard was too girly so we sold it and he was left with just the basic frame. The quilt was too big, just an extra one I had picked up at Goodwill for $5 that we were using for the time being.

 

 The blinds on his window were dirty and broken and the right one wouldn't extend all the way down.  We had to keep an oscillating fan on the dresser to keep things cool in the summer.  (though why the fan is still there when there's a Christmas tree in the corner baffles me.  Or maybe the Christmas tree was still there come summer time.  I really can't be sure).

This room, like all the others, also had the dark wood trim.  I had already started priming the ceiling trim when I took this picture.

 

In the picture below you can see a set of brown metal shelves.  I got these at a yard sale for $5 knowing I wanted to do an automotive theme for his room.  They were a catchall for awhile there until his room got its makeover.

Once or twice a year the kids spend a week or so down south with their grandparents and last year during one of the times they were gone I decided to get his room done and surprise him when he got home.  He knew I was going to be working on it, he just didn't know what all I had planned. 

The boy has been obsessed with anything and everything automotive since he was 9 months old and started making car noises while pushing a car along the floor.  So I knew he would love a room with that theme and I had been collecting things for quite awhile.  So after a whirlwind week of hardwork he walked into his room looking like this instead.

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To say he was excited would be severely understated. His jaw dropped, he raised his hands in the air and yelled YES!, and immediately began jumping around on the bed, lol!

His favorite color is orange so I had promised him I would include it somehow in his room.  He LOVED the stripes on the wall.  Blue is his second favorite color.  : )  The rest of the walls were painted a khaki color.  I don't remember the specific name of the color, but it was some sort of khaki/tan.

 

When you first walk up to his room you actually see the side of his closet first.  I found the sign at a flea market for a few dollars and had bought the numbered hooks years before at Hobby Lobby knowing I would use them someday in his room.  They hold his cowboy dress-up clothes, his hats, and on Sundays he hangs his church clothes on them in between services.

I took down the broken blinds and replaced them with roller shades.  I found the curtain rod at a thrift store for $3 I think, and the curtains actually came from a single curtain panel.  A local thrift store has a 50% off day once a month and I found a single, navy blue, panel with tabs on it at the top.  With the discount I only paid $2.50 for it.  I brought it home and cut the tabs off since they didn't line up with what I planned to do.  Then I cut the panel in half, sewed new rod pockets on them, and then sewed on stripes of green ribbon that I already had.  So for only a little over $2 I had a cute set of curtains to match.

 

I spray painted the brown metal shelves gray and bought canvas bins for his toys.  

You can see that he keeps them stuffed full, lol!

 

On the top of his shelf is a little wooden train that spells his name.  I bought the magnetic train letters at a craft fair.  He has his great grandpa's name and it's very unique, so we never find it in stores on key chains and cups, so its fun for him to have something like this instead.

At a recent yard sale he found a whole collection of vehicle emblems for 50¢ each.  He had brought a dollar along so he got to pick out two of them.  We added them to the front of the shelves.  The old gas can was a $1 yard sale find that was originally supposed to be for my Etsy shop, but I decided to keep it for his room instead.  He's kind of over it now, but there for awhile he loved the movie Cars so we added this Route 66 sign.  He says he's over Lightning McQueen now, but he still likes the road sign.  : )

Above his bed is a set of reproduction gas station signs I had bought the year before this makeover and had tucked away.  I had actually forgotten all about them and when I opened the box of stuff I had collected for his room it felt like Christmas morning!  : )

 

My husband built the headboard for me and I beat it up and stained it. It turned out just how I wanted, I love it!  The bedding was the big splurge for this room, it's from Pottery Barn.  My son actually picked it out.  I showed him several options that I thought would go well with his room and this is the one he picked.  He liked all the different colors in it and the fact that it had orange on it.  We got automotive themed sheets to go with it.  He found the little car pillow at a thrift store for $2.

 

He still takes a nap most days and he hated having to remake his bed twice a day so we started keeping a blanket on the end of his bed.  I found this red and white afghan for $5 at a thrift store and it has become his favorite.  You can't really see it, but I also found a navy blue bed skirt at the same thrift store for $2.

 

Beside his bed I put this little red table that I made over a couple of years ago.  The gas pump is from Hobby Lobby and is a little bank.  He loves Legos and always has some sort of creation of his on display.  And one of my absolute favorite things in his room is his night light.

 

It was a turn signal from a school bus that I got for $1.  We added a light to the back and made it into a night light for him.  It has a nice warm glow at night.  I just love how unique it is!

And the knob on the drawer of the little table looks like a shifter knob.  He found it at Hobby Lobby and was so proud of it!  : )

 

This plastic bucket keeps his Hot Wheels collection contained.  Well....mostly contained....some of the time.  You can see I decided to leave the trim in his room the dark wood.  I painted only the ceiling trim so that it would blend in with the ceiling and make the room look and feel bigger.  The rest of the trim I left alone for 2 reasons.  1) it has a more masculine feel to it being wood, and 2) he's a 5 year old boy who loves cars....I knew it was bound to get crashed into and banged up so I didn't see the point in painting it and then getting upset when he chipped it.

 

On the other side of the curtains he has a shelf and a big bucket for his stuffed animals.  He always loves to sleep with 2 or 3 of them.  : )

 

This shelf was actually made for me by my grandpa when I was in high school. It's been painted a couple of different colors through the years depending on what room it's being used in.  For now it holds his little T-ball trophies and soccer medals, his baby handprint, and a jar of shells collected on beach trips with the grandparents.

 

Next to his closet is this little bookcase that we've had since my daughter was a baby.  She got a desk with built-in bookshelves so we passed this on for him to use.  Above that is a speed limit sign that I got at a flea market, I think I paid $15 for it.

 

On top of it he has his tractor bank.  He loves anything with wheels, but especially anything John Deere since his daddy is a John Deere diesel mechanic.  I found the little gas station sign at Hobby Lobby.  I'm old enough that I can remember my dad buying gas at Standard stations.  Besides his love of all things with tires and engines, the boy also loves art.  He's constantly drawing and creating.  I found that metal thingy-ma-bob at a yard sale for $1.  It's something or other automotive related and it makes a perfect pen/marker/scissor holder.

A couple of other fun little touches in his room are this diamond plate light switch cover I found at Walmart....

 

and this motorcycle ceiling fan light pull (we were able to get rid of the ugly oscillating fan when we put a ceiling fan up). 

So let's do a quick look back at the before and afters.

 

I don't know if you noticed that I never showed the 4th wall in his room.  The wall opposite the bed.  That wall has his dresser and that project isn't complete yet.  I'm very very close and SO excited to finally show you that project reveal as well.  Hopefully very soon!

In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed this automotive themed boy's room makeover.  

I know we've sure enjoyed the change! 

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Frugal Farm Themed Nursery Decor

Hello everyone!

Just in case you happened to miss it somehow in my last post, our sweet baby girl was finally born last week.  She is so sweet and cuddly and we have all been enjoying her so very much!

Today I want to show you around her "nursery" and share how I gave her a cute little corner on a small budget.  I have less than $20 invested in her farm themed decor.  Side note - I find it humorous that with my first child I spent so much time picking out the perfect furniture, the perfect bedding, the perfect this and that.  I agonized over the smallest details and spent so much time (and money) on her room.  By the time this 3rd child has come along, she gets the hand me down, teething-scarred, 8 year old furniture, and a yard sale find bedding set, lol! 

 I put nursery in quotes because she doesn't actually have her own room to be a real nursery, her little spot in the world is in a corner of the master bedroom.  Keep in mind, this is the last room that has yet to be painted so the walls still have the original weird peachy pink color on them and still have the dark trim.

So let me "show you around" a bit first and then we'll get into a little more detail of things.

 

Some perspective - the dark area you see to the right is the doorway leading into the master bathroom, and this picture was taken at the end of the bed looking across to the crib.

So her little area is tucked in along this wall across from our bed.

 

The crib and changing table are hand-me-down from our first child so we didn't have to spend any money there, and the little white dresser came from my mom.  It was originally intended for something else, but it tucked in that spot just perfectly and gave us some extra storage space for her.

I love the combination of plaid, ticking stripes, and ric-rac trim!  One sheet is plaid, the other is ticking striped.

Now onto some details.  The bedding is Pottery Barn brand, but I certainly didn't pay PB prices for it.  I paid all of $5 for the whole set at a yard sale!  It was practically brand new and came with the bumper pad, bed skirt, and two sheets.  It has such a sweet style to it and of course I love red and white, and the farm theme is so cute.  I bought the set before I was even pregnant, not knowing if we would have a boy or a girl, but figuring it was neutral enough to be fine for either.  

I bought the two bolster pillows much later at a different yard sale for $1 each.  I couldn't really remember exactly what the bedding set looked like, but I knew it had red and white so I got them.  I was so pleased when I finally did get the set out again and realized the bedding also has red ric-rac trim on it like the pillows do!  They could have been sold together originally they look so cute together.

 

 After I got the bedding put on the bed the area above the crib looked so plain and I really wanted something cute, but also something that didn't cost much of anything.  The first thing I tried was printing out homemade art with the letters of her name and used Washi tape to attach them to the wall and surrounded them with an empty red frame I already had.  And I liked it just fine.  At first.  But then it seemed to need something more.  It seemed awfully lonely up there all by itself.  So then I got the idea of printing off coloring pages and letting each of the kids color a page for her wall.  I spray painted some thrifted frames with red spray paint I had left over from another project and added them to the wall.  But once I had them up there I didn't like the printed letters anymore.  I loved the coloring pages, but the other part just didn't seem to be the right fit anymore.  

I searched Hobby Lobby looking for inspiration, and even went through all of their posters and art work trying to find just the right thing, or at least an idea of something I could make at home.  But I came up with nothing and every day those letters drove me more and more crazy.

And then one Thursday morning I saw an ad for an estate sale that started that morning.  By then I was 41 weeks pregnant, but that didn't stop me.  I bundled up the kids and hustled them into the van and we went to check it out.  The home had a couple of sheds outside that were full of stuff for sale and in a dark dirty corner of one them, behind a box.....I spied it.  

The perfect piece. 

 

A large cross stitch style, pastoral scene done with yarn.  So sweet, so simplistic, so vintage, and so imperfectly perfect!  I asked the man in charge how much for it and a $2 price tag was just what my wallet ordered. 

 It was a bit dirty and scuffed up so I brought it home and gave the cloth part a light scrubbing with a bit of soap to clean it up and I gave the frame a light coat of fresh white craft paint to brighten it up.

 

It was the perfect size to fit inside the empty red frame that had already been hanging there so I glued the red frame to the white frame to give it some more impact and make it stand out more so that the white frame wouldn't get lost against the pale wall.

 

 Ahhhhh....MUCH better!!  Now I LOVE it!

 

I love the combination of an "art" piece and also having my kiddos artwork up there too.  

                                Colored by the 5 year old.                                                               The 8 year old's work.

 It makes it that much more special, and they're pretty proud to have their work displayed like this.  :)

 

 I also love how the style of the apple trees on the vintage piece so closely resembles the apple trees on the bedding set.  

 On the other wall is her changing table. 

 I tucked in a little spindle lamp that I've had for years and added a low wattage bulb to use for those middle of the night feedings and diaper changes.  The dresser has little cubbies with baskets that hold diapers and other sorts of baby paraphernalia.  Above the table is a mirror with hooks that I got a yard sale for $1.  It originally had a different style of hook, but 2 of the 3 were broken and I absolutely could not find matching ones anywhere.  So I ended up just getting a completely different style to replace them.  They were 50% off at Hobby Lobby so I think paid about $4 or so for the 3 hooks.

 

They're pretty handy to hold her quickly growing headband collection, as well as a handy spot to hold the little diaper disposal bags for easy access during changes.

 

 On top of the little white dresser sits a picture my grandma gave us years ago.  It's one of her favorite scenes and I thought it would be special to include it.

 

You may have noticed this piece sitting at the end of her crib.  My dad made it for my niece as a dress up center to store her dresses and shoes, but she had outgrown it so it got passed on to us.  It fits just perfectly at the end of her crib and makes a great little "closet" since she doesn't have one of her own.

 

And that, my friends, concludes our story on how I put together a simple farm themed "nursery" for under $20.  

                                                            

Kids'/Guest Bathroom Farmhouse Makeover

WARNING:

*This post is picture heavy, so fortify yourself with some coffee and snacks and settle in for the long haul.*

Ok, so......I've been promising this makeover post for quite awhile now, but one thing after another happened (or didn't happen) and it took much longer to complete than I thought, such is life I suppose.  Part of this bathroom has been done for almost a year now, but I was hesitant to share it until it was complete.  I'm happy to report that it's now complete!  Yay!!!  Like I warned you before though, it is a bit picture heavy, but I didn't figure you'd mind too awfully much since my posts have been so few and far between lately.  It was quite challenging to get decent pictures of such a small room that doesn't get any natural light, but I did the best I could and we'll just live with it.  Mmmm-kay?  :)

So here goes.

I'm sharing the makeover of our second bathroom....the kiddos' bathroom, and when we have company it's also the guest bath.

When we moved in the trim was dark like the rest of the house and the walls were yellow peach orange....well, it just depended on what time of day it was really.  Sometimes they looked yellow, sometimes peach, sometimes down right orange.....like the rest of the walls in the house were.

It had an oddly placed towel bar, brass/gold colored knobs (well actually it only had one doorknob, the one for the linen closet was missing and I went ahead and bought an oil rubbed bronze one that I found on clearance.)  The tub is small, typical for a manufactured home, so we bought a curved shower rod for it right off the bat to give just a couple of more inches of room in there.

The floors had a very orange-y hue that matched the walls quite nicely really, but they drove me crazy. Especially the black "grout" lines and the off-centered way the tiles were laid (and not well, I might add.  You could see the plywood subfloor in between some of the tiles!).

The mirror and vanity were pretty much builder grade I guess you could say.  The counter top was a grayish blue, the boring sink was old and the finish was wearing off (no matter how much we cleaned it it still never looked clean), the light was brassy and boring, and it had a hand towel holder that was placed much too high.  I guess I had already removed it when I took these pictures.

Scuzzy orange flat paint that was filthy.

SO much orange!!!!

BUT......

Some fresh coats of paint, crisp white trim, a new light, new flooring, a new vanity, a new shower curtain and towels, a little beadboard, and some decorative accents later and it was all MUCH improved!

I painted the room gray, Benjamin Moore's Rockport Gray at 50% to be exact.  It took me FIVE tries to get the color right!!  I also painted all the trim a fresh glossy, off-the-shelf white to brighten the place up even more.

One of the most fun things in the makeover was the shower curtain I made.  You might remember that I shared that, and the tutorial for it, last year.  It can be found {here}.  I had an idea of what I wanted in here, but the closest thing I could find was $40 and I didn't want to spend $40 on a shower curtain so I made my own....for $14 and loved it a WHOLE lot more than the original one I was thinking of buying.  It's so unique and fun.

We changed out the vinyl floor tiles for something much less citrusy.  These tiles weren't my first choice, but the ones I loved were much too expensive, I just couldn't afford them.  So I went with these cheap ones from Lowes.  They have quite a bit of beige in them and you wouldn't think that beige and gray would pair well together, but the walls have just enough "greige" tint to them, and the tiles have accents of gray as well as the beveled "grout" lines being gray and they work together just fine.  Plus, I figure that down the road if I change my mind about the gray walls, the floors should be neutral enough to go well with something else.  These tiles were inexpensive to begin with, but then I used an online promo code and got them even cheaper.  I think I paid less than $30 for all of it.  And notice that I had Hubby lay them even, with nice straight lines, not off-centered like the old tiles were.  It pleases my eye so much better and just gives it a nice clean look.

On the left wall we added bead board that I painted white, new baseboards, and some chair rail to top it off.  It added SO much character to the room!

We also added vintage coat hooks to be used as towel holders.  Notice that they're all different?  I love to mix and match.  :)  They were a bit rusty so I coated them with a few coats of clear sealant spray to help keep them from rusting further with damp towels being placed on them, and also to keep the rust from rubbing off on said towels.  I wanted hooks instead of towel bars so that it would be easier for the kids to hang their own towels up.  We also placed them down a bit lower than you normally would so that the kids can reach them.

I found new towels that have stripes of "greige" that go really well with the rest of the room.

Above the bead board on this left wall I have a miniature gallery wall.

This one is a cell phone picture.  The bathroom is so small I just couldn't zoom out far enough with my DSLR camera since I don't have a wide angle lens.  So the quality of these next couple of pictures is a bit off, and the chair rail looks bent, but at least you get the idea.

I hung bath time pictures of my kiddos from when they were babies, and then a more current photo of the two of them together.  I added in pictures of each of their initials to add a cheery splash of red to the mix so that the room wouldn't be too monochromatic, plus y'all know I love me some red!  (I guess I'll have to expand this gallery wall in about 5 more months.  :D)  I already had the two smaller frames, and the three wider frames I got for 50¢ each at a church rummage sale.  The license plate in the middle is German, I found it at a vintage booth at a local quilt festival. 

The other part of the gallery wall is this little "vintage" knock- off clock I made.  You can read about how I turned a $4 Walmart clock into a "vintage" cutie and saved $56 while I was it! 

See that {here}.

Now let's look at the right side of the room.

Originally, there was a hand towel holder, the circle/ring kind, mounted above the sink on the wall, but it was too high and too hard for little ones to manage to put the towel back.  So I installed a hook lower down on their level next to the linen closet instead.  We also put in a new sink/vanity, but we'll get to that in a minute.

My 4 year old still can't reach the sink all the way and needs a stool to stand on.  I found this cute little wooden one at a local antique/junk store for $8 and I love how the wood adds a spot of warmth to the room.  If it was all gray and black and white it could be kind of cold feeling, but the wood adds a nice contrast that helps balance it out.  A coat of clear wax helps protect it from moisture damage.

The walls and trim were painted, the beadboard and hooks were up, and the new shower curtain was up almost a year ago, but the room still had the old orange-ish vanity.  I couldn't find what I wanted for a long time, plus we couldn't afford a new one for quite awhile.  But then my little Etsy business took off and I saved up and finally found {this} really cute vanity/sink combo.  I showed it to Hubby and he approved so I ordered it.  What neither of us thought about until we got it home was how the plumbing was situated.  One of my non-negotiable requirements for a new vanity was that it had to have drawers.  This was the only one I could find that I liked, was the right size, and had drawers.  But what we discovered was that the plumbing was actually situated on the right....in the way of the drawers.  But thankfully handy Hubby was able to switch them around and make it work.

I spray painted the knobs to make them match the rest of the hardware in the room and it fits the space perfectly.  I love that it's more narrow in depth than the old one.  It gives a couple of inches more room and makes it feel just that much bigger in there.  I love that the bead board insets match the bead board on the opposite wall, too.

Here's a full view of the sink area with the linen closet in the background.  You can see I replaced the brass light and painted the mirror white as well.

There's a story behind this cute barn style light fixture.  When we first moved back to Florida and were living in the rental house, the kids and I went yard saling one morning and came across a sale that had lots of things that were just my style.  One thing she had was this light fixture, but she was asking more than I could afford and since we were still in the rental house and I wasn't positive I would actually need/use it I passed it up.  Well, the nice lady invited us to visit her church and we ended up attending there permanently.  So a year later when I was ready to re-do this bathroom I happened to think about that light fixture I had seen at her sale.  I didn't figure there was much chance that she still had it, but I sent her a message to check just in case.  I couldn't believe it when she texted back and said she did indeed still have it and that I could have it for free!  (I had found a similar one, but just a single sconce, online for $143!!! )  I was so excited!  I couldn't convince her to take any money for it, so I took her out to lunch instead.  :)

Isn't this faucet the most adorable thing ever?!?  I just love it to itsty bitsy squishy little pieces!!!  And I got it for free, too!  Well....basically for free.  I make a little bit from Amazon each month or sometimes every other month and I had a few of the gift cards saved up and was able to order this for free.  I just love the old fashioned style of it. 

 (The link for it will be at the end of the post if you're interested.)

We use this little miniature galvanized bucket to hold the kids toothbrushes and toothpaste.

I even spray painted the night light to match the room, lol!

Another cell phone picture.

To the left of the sink is the toilet area. 

I hung an old soda crate on the wall to hold some necessities as well as some decor items.  Another spot of weathered wood further helps to warm up the room.  On the top we keep extra hand towels folded up, and to the right of that are a couple of reproduction metal weights I found at Hobby Lobby a few years ago.

I got the license plate at a yard sale for 10¢ and it adds a quirky splash of red to this side of the room to balance out the red initials on the opposite wall.  The crate also keeps some extra TP handy for guests who don't want to go rootin' through cupboards and closets searching for more when they're in desperate need.  :)  The other decorative piece of this display is a "jar" full of vintage clothespins.  The "jar" is actually an antique street lamp cover that my grandpa gave me.  It's open on both ends so we have to be careful when we move it to clean.

Also in the same area we find a toilet paper stand.  There was no TP holder when we moved in and since the kids are small and couldn't reach across to the opposite wall, and placing it on the side of the vanity would be too squished, I opted for this stand to keep it within reach of the kids small arms.  A little galvanized basket I got at a thrift store for 99¢ helps disguise the kids's bathroom wipes on the back of the toilet.  And the trash can?  Well it's a repurposed galvanized vintage flour bin.  :)

Another cheap little makeover project for this room was the other light that is mounted on the ceiling.  Previously it was brassy and gaudy looking with a textured glass round globe.  Very 90's style.  They are/were all throughout this home and slowly but surely we're updating them as we can.  This makeover cost me a whopping 99¢!  I had Hubby remove the metal part and I spray painted it Oil Rubbed Bronze that I already had.  The globe part is actually from a ceiling fan I think and it cost me 99¢ at a thrift store.  I like how it looks like a miniature vintage school style light now.

SO......that pretty much sums up everything that was done in here on this makeover project.  Now let's take a look at some side by side before and after comparisons just for the fun of it.

I hope you've enjoyed this tour of our guest/kids' bathroom farmhouse style makeover, and thank you to my faithful readers that are still around even though I haven't been a very good blogger lately.  

August is looking to be a busy month for us with my daughter's 8th birthday party coming up soon, swimming trips to the nearby springs, visits to the big city 45 minutes away for midwife appts, and towards the end of the month an ultrasound to find out if this little person growing inside me is a boy or a girl!  I can't wait!!  :D

I hope you're having a fantastic summer!

                                                               

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