$50 and a trip to Ikea
/** Sorry for the small pics. I thought I would save them down for quicker loading but saved a little too small. A few months ago I posted a mood board for my son's big boy room. I started working on it the day I posted the mood board and just finished it YESTERDAY! You would think that for as long as it took I would have done a ton to it. Nope. It's just been really, really busy around here.
I had taken some "before" pics but I can't find them anywhere so I headed to Facebook to see if I happened to have a random pic or two. And I did! I had taken these one night after my son had thrown a huge fit to show the destruction, but they will give you an idea of what we had.
There was stuff everywhere and he ripped one of the arms off of his toddler bed (terrible, I know!). As you can see in the pics, we had that same ugly tile in his room as we did everywhere else. We also had brown walls.
The first thing I knew that needed to be done was painting the walls. The perfect time to do it? Right before the new floors came in. Here is how it looked:
The next thing I did was make his bed. You may remember this $30 project:
Then I went in and painted his door black and changed the hardware to the new egg knobs. And that is where it stayed for a couple of months. So what finally motivated me to finish? It was a combo of hating feeling like we just forgot about him and his space while everything else has been done and the fact that the cat ripped his drapes (ugh).
As you can see, there was no dresser - that's because it was in the closet. The train table and workbench took up so much room I didn't want to cram a dresser in the room too (plus, his closet is crazy huge so it fit and still had plenty of room). As much as I liked him having space with the dresser in the closet, I needed somewhere to sit his radio. I sat on his bed and stared at his room trying to decide what I needed to do. I moved the bed a few times, moved the train table and work bench. Nothing really worked. I had just about given up. I decided to focus on curtains. I knew instantly cheap was the way I was going to go because of the cat and, well, my three-year-old son. I went to Ikea to grab a few pair and while there found the solution to my lack of space issue - a road play mat! It has the tracks and road that my son loves and it doubles as a rug so it's perfect.
I got home and got to work on a few finishing touches (like painting the baseboards and touching the wall paint). After about 2 hours the poor "forgotten" room was finished! Check it out...
And what does my son thinK....
He is absolutely thrilled! He said his room looks pretty like sissy's now.
So where does the $50 and Ikea come in? The drapes and mat both came from Ikea. The panels were $14.99 for two and the mat was $14.99 for a grand total of $44.97 before tax.
I had had the shelves for a while but didn't have anywhere to put them that made much sense (seemed weird to have them floating on a random wall). They had originally been on the bed where Thomas is, but that wasn't going to work when we moved the bed (I could just see terrible things happening with that).
It's so funny that I was so hung up on finishing the room and with one trip to Ikea it all came together! We love not having the train table take up so much space and my son loves being able to get down on the floor and play. A true win-win for everyone!
The details
New stuff: Paint: Benjamin Moore Courtland Blue ($45) Drapes: Marmorblad Curtains - Ikea ($29.98) Rug: Lekplats Play Mat - Ikea ($14.99) Bed: $30 Rustic DIY Headboard ($30) Quilt: Sullivan Patch Quilt - Pottery Barn Kids ($149) Sheets: Patrick Sheeting - Pottery Barn Kids ($59) Stuff we already had:
Dresser: Crate and Barrel ($499.00. We bought this three years ago. It is no longer available) Shelves: Espresso Profile Shelves - The Container Store ($70.00 for both)
Not including what we already had, we spent $328 on this room remodel. It is very much a high low project (which I feel all projects should be). It's a perfect transitional room for a toddler!
