making a big girl room

This week I have a non-knitting finished object to share ... remember when I'd celebrated finishing the crosses quilt and mentioned that my summer project was to create a "big girl's room" for my daughter? This is the end result! If you take a peek at the full-bed photo in that blog post, you'll see a good "before" shot. I had no headboard and boring beige walls ...

Step one was clearly jazzing up the walls with a great shade of purple paint ... then tracking down some furniture. I had no idea how hard it is to find headboards online (well, wooden headboards that is ... there are plenty of great upholstered headboard options out there). The majority of the online furniture offerings consist of entire (and expensive) bed units that are platform style. The platform style is nice in that you can skip purchasing a boxspring for the mattress, but I already had a mattress and boxspring set. I was really really tempted to buy a Jenny Lind bed from Land of Nod (still love that bed!), but it seemed silly to purchase a bed and then have to figure out where to store the no longer necessary boxspring. So a headboard it was! I finally tracked one down on sale at Pottery Barn Teen (the Coraline headboard). I searched a long time for a nightstand with a little character, and this is the Juliette Side Table from Pottery Barn Kids. I fell in love with the turned feet!

While I love the shape and styling of this headboard, I found myself cursing Pottery Barn at several points in this process. The first time was over the color (which I accept as no one's fault but my own, and is one of the perils of purchasing things online ...). I selected the Charlotte Blue color, which looks very classy and mature online. In person ... it's very a greenish blue. Definitely not the shade I was going for, and it clashed with the purple walls. I corrected that situation with some Krylon spray paint in a much funkier, brighter light blue. The second time I cursed? When I realized that the headboard's pre-drilled connecting holes in no way possible would line up with my twin bed's standard metal frame. So much for "compatible with standard bed frames." The holes were way too wide and tall for the frame I had ... a situation which still boggles me, since twin bed mattress measurements are pretty standard.  Thankfully that situation was fixed with a drill to create properly aligned holes. Despite these frustrations, I am soo happy with the end result!



The next big project I had for this room was adding a large, fun decal wall decoration. I'm probably way behind the times on this trend, but I couldn't resist this cute one. It wasn't outrageously priced (especially if you consider the cost of original artwork), and is removable/repositionable so I can easily take it down when she grows out of it. If you take a look at the orginal design, you'll notice that I modified the design a bit. My wall wasn't long enough to apply the decal exactly as designed, with the branch holding the two owls being too long. That was easily fixed by trimming the length of that branch decal, and getting a little creative with placing the "scrolls" at the end of that branch. The decal set comes with a "color by number" style plan that tells you where to locate each sticker, making the process super simple. It took me only a couple of hours to install, and one of those hours was while toting a baby in my front carrier! I am totally in love with the contemporary colors and prints within this set ... I could make a quilt inspired by some of these combinations!



Most importantly, the room has received a stamp of approval from the big girl herself! Check out the other finished objects this week over at TamisAmis!