January $100 room challenge–Kids room/playroom before

Welcome to January which means the beginning of a new $100 room challenge!  If you are new to this challenge, you can read all about how Erin from Lemons, Lavendar, and Laundry started the challenge.  But basically anyone who wants to participate chooses a room to work on, blogs about progress on it every Wednesday during the month and then the final reveal on the last Wednesday of the month.  I have done several rooms before in previous $100 room challenges and I love the challenge to complete the room in a short time frame with a small budget – they are some of my favorite rooms in our house!

• Guest bedroom makeover
• Guest bathroom makeover
• Laundry room makeover
• Master bathroom makeover

So this month I am going to be tackling our bonus/kids room/playroom!  I had several rooms that I had been considering doing but some will just require a bit more time/work than I can do this month so those will have to wait.  This room was on my list to work on in 2019 too and this challenge will be just the thing to make me do it!

So you may be thinking… wow, that room looks done!  And I really have worked on it in phases over the last 2 years.

It started out this lavendar color when we bought the house – horrible paint job including the stair rail painted lavendar and a whole section of wall that just wasn’t painted because it was hard to reach.

So over the last 2 years, I have painted the walls (but never got around to painting the trim), we’ve added some decor on the walls, gathered furniture pieces, and did some decorating.  One year for their birthdays, I took my nieces shopping and they picked out a few decor pieces, matching pillows/blankets for the bed.  I found and painted 2 trunks for the end of the bed, painted an old sewing machine table turned desk, and most recently found and painted a $5 nightstand which I’ll show you later this month.

This room is a bonus room above our garage so also has all the attic access in it.  We discovered attic space on that back wall that wasn’t able to be accessed so we had a handyman add a door so now I can access it.  I store all my Christmas decor (minus the trees) in that attic hall space. But I have never gotten around to painting that door or the rest of the trim.

Also as you can see the beds have no headboards.

Another thing I want to address is this wall – of course, the Christmas tree will be packed up this week, and then I’d like to paint that IKEA unit white.  Anyone done that with success?  I don’t want to create a chipping/messy problem since it gets a ton of use but I wish it was white instead.  It was bought 7-8 years ago before IKEA even had white ones.  It’s also January so the whole room – closet, shelves, drawers all need to be gone through and cleaned out and stuff gotten rid of.  So that is on the agenda too.

This house/shelf will be the other main focus during the challenge.  Someone passed this on to us and it’s solid wood and adorable but not really serving the purpose we need.  I don’t want to use for a shelf, and it’s really too big for the old Fisher price dollhouse stuff that has been found over the years at yard sales.  My nieces and little girl all got American Girl style dolls (the Target brand ones found on clearance over the last year!) for Christmas and I have scoured facebook yard sale sites to find a few pieces of doll furniture plus clothes and accessories.  But that stuff is big!  The dolls are 18 inches high so the room spaces need to be at least 20 inches high and the dolls and furniture can’t fit in those lower 2 shelves in this house at all.   I have looked at this dollhouse and debated about trying to remove and rearrange the shelves but they are dovetailed in and I just don’t want to destroy it.  They really want a place to play with their dolls and also store all the clothes/shoes, accessories.  SOO… I’m thinking that selling this piece and building or adapting another piece is what’s going to happen but I am still mulling ideas around.   If you have American Girl style dolls and have some kind of storage for their stuff and/or dollhouse for them I’d love any ideas you have!  So that will be a major part of work this month.

I’m dealing with awkwardly shaped walls and low ceilings in parts of the room which limits me quite a bit on rearranging things but I’d love to see if there is another way to make it function better.  And I am sure once I work on the room at the end a little redecorating will happen as well.

So here are the things I plan on working on this month:

• paint trim/closet doors and touch up walls
• touch up paint and put clear coat on all furniture – I didn’t put clear coat on some of the furniture and some of it is looking bad
• make headboards for beds – this will be a FREE project – any guesses what I plan to use?
• remake or sell and build a new shelf/dollhouse system to fit 18-inch dolls and accessories
• possibly paint IKEA cube unit
• purge/clean out closet, drawers, shelves
• freshen up/update decor

It won’t necessarily be a huge before/after wow factor like some of my other rooms but I am really excited about this challenge making me tackle painting the trim and finish some projects in this room along with creating a space for them to have fun with their dolls.  I’d love any suggestions you have and hope you’ll follow along this month as I tackle this room!

And check out all the other bloggers who plan to tackle their own $100 room challenge – can’t wait to see what they are doing this month too.