This bedroom in a nearly-100-year-old house was recently updated for not much money! Before, the carpet was really yucky--all the padding underneath had deteriorated into a fine powder and the carpet looked "indoor-outdoor" in 1970's gold and brown. Ugh!

I wanted wood floors, but we had to do what we could afford. My husband (a carpenter) pulled out the old carpet and cut 1/4 inch plywood to fit the floor. He sanded it and applied a coat of polyurethane and then repeated the process again, allowing each coat to dry for at least 24 hours. The wood was put down with a pneumatic staple gun.

As far as colors, my husband had some paint from a previous project, a deep rosy color. I hated to waste the paint, so we used it. The only problem was that I had not planned to use this color at all. My daughter wanted bright colors!! What I ended up doing was picking out one of my daughter's favorite, brightly-colored stuffed animals that had a touch of this deep rose color in it. We took Mr. Monkey (seen sitting on the bed) to the fabric store to build our color scheme! The curtains were made from an on-sale fabric in a lovely blue and we trimmed them in orange pom-pom trim.

The furniture is all thrift store finds, except the narrow, tall shelf, which was an inexpensive, unfinished pine shelf that I stained to match the other pieces. We cleaned up the thrift-store furniture's nicks and bumps with a cloth and a coating of furniture restorer.

The curtains have a rod at the top and at the bottom so that the windows can be fully covered or partially covered to let in light. I think this shows off the old window trim.

All accessories, like the orange baskets and the comforter, were found on sale. We just carried Mr. Monkey from store to store--Target, Pier I, etc--looking for what was on sale that would match Mr. Monkey! The orange pillows were only 5 dollars apiece!

One of the big purchases was the overhead light fixture, which was still on sale, but you gotta get good, safe lighting! The light fixture was about 39.00 on sale at Home Depot. This is one of my favorite things about the room because there used to only be a bulb sticking out of the ceiling with no cover. Like I said--OLD house!

One thing I do LOVE about an old house is its charm--things like the old doorknobs.

Thank you for visiting our room makeover!

A Mother's Journal

Livin N Writin About It

Five In A Row ~ The "Heart" of our Homeschool:

Art of the Month:
"Rowing"

Quotations

"A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap."
Danish proverb

"I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand."
Chinese proverb