Before & After: Little Girl's Room

You may remember a few of my earlier posts this year about the 70's sidesplit I furnished for a single mom and her young daughter.  I was tasked with furnishing this newly renovated (but not by me) home with 3 bedrooms, Living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, mud room and front entry, complete with accessories, window coverings and light fixtures - all to be completed within a 3 month time period and a very modest budget.  To say this was a challenge would be an understatement,,,,in fact I did all of this while simultaneously, also furnishing Brian's condo from top to bottom.  Yes I admit I went a little bit cuckoo there for a couple of  months while sourcing with a split personality,,,,,all girly and curvy and traditional and french for one place,,,,,,,,all masculine and modern and simple for the other.

So today I thought I'd share some of the after photos of the 70's sidesplit by starting with the little girl's room.  The little girls room and the guest bedroom were the smallest rooms in the house and also had the smallest amount of the budget allocated to them.  The little girl's requirements were pretty simple,,,she wanted pink, ruffles, and sparkle.  Her mother insisted nothing trendy and nothing too modern, it had to be classic and preferably with some french style.   Aside from the budget challenges the timeline meant that there was little if any time to order custom pieces or special order items, and forget about time consuming treasure hunts for antiques or vintage pieces, we needed things instock or quick ship! 

Here's an After photo of the girl's bedroom.......

Here's what it looked like Before

The room had new floors and newly painted walls when I came on board, neither of which were to be changed, so new paint or wallpaper wasn't an option.  I had to learn to love ICI's 'Bavarian Cream'.

This was the second edition of the concept plan, and a loose one at that,,,,,originally I had planned a series of low dressers with knee space for a desk to go along the window wall but that plan changed early in the buying stage and they're no longer shown here.  Instead you see an antique vanity : ).

One of the first decision made in the planning stage was to splurge on a custom upholstered headboard, ruffle bedskirt and roman shade.  So the first thing I did was select some fabric and then sketch up a design for a headboard so I could get the order in production asap.  I designed the headboard to have an exagerrated height and a contrast biased cut piping detail. I chose a solid colour fabric that would give her more flexibility in pairing patterns with it in the future.

While I was in a consignment shop looking for other things for the house, I spotted this vintage vanity table.  It has french style legs and the paint finish on it looked as if it was custom made for the girls' room, it was in great condition and a great price. It was perfect and I bought it on the spot. Except this meant I had to change the plan, we'd no longer have room for the combined low long desk/dresser combo under the window wall and this.......

Unfortunately the vanity table didn't come with a chair and I was having a really hard time finding something that would work with it and that was a affordable.  Just when I was losing hope, I walked into HomeSense one day and bam, there was this perfect painted Louis style chair with cane back, and it was only $150.  Wow, twice lucky with this one room!  I took some of the wall paint from the room and drybrushed the chair frame with it so it would blend in more with the vanity.  Then I took a minwax stain marker and applied it to the carved details to give it more of an aged look.  

Because of the change in plan due to the vanity purchase, I decided to purchase 3 drawer dressers to be placed on either side of the bed that would also be night tables.  In total, this gave her 6 drawers which is what I had originally planned for along the window wall.  I chose the Koppang dresser from Ikea because it had simple lines that wouldn't clash with the vanity and because they were an incredible price.  I replaced the knobs with crystal ones and had the drawer fronts painted a shade of pink found in the striped fabric.

Here's a glimpse of the dresser with the new paint colour and knobs.  This was taken on move-in day, we still had some art prints to hang and accent pillows to buy for the bed. 

I purchased a series of six botanical prints at the Sherway antique show in January then took them to my framers where I selected matts and a simple antique looking frame.  I had the Bavarian Cream paint sample on hand for reference.

We added a simple french line around the matts,,,, in pink of course!

The prints were ready to hang and here you can see the deep pile shag area carpet I placed under her bed, its one of the softest plushest shag carpets I've ever felt, velvety soft.

The homeowner's mother had these antique lamps in her basement storage room and I was crazy for them when she asked me if I thought they could work on the vanity.  They were purchased in Paris in the 1940's or 50's by her aunt.  The shades are hand painted silk and the bases are solid brass.  Gorgeous!  Still to come for this corner is a fabric and ribbon memo board.

Beautiful detail......

I opted for a bookcase on the wall at the foot of the bed, its another Ikea unit called the Liatorp chosen for its traditional styling.  I had the beadboard backpanel painted the same pink as the dresser drawer fronts.  There are only 3 Ikea items in the entire house,,,,,2 of them happen to be in this room!  This was taken just a few weeks after they had moved in and they hadn't yet filled up the shelves. 

The botanicals finally got hung.....

I contemplated whether to hang two bontanicals on either side of the bed or just one,,,,I decided just one at the time but I think I'll add 2 more in the coming months.  You can see a bit of the painted chandelier in this photo,,it has clear beads with pink drops.

I love swing arm lamps beside a bed, in this room I thought that these ones added a bit of contemporary freshness to the vintage vanity lamps and traditional chandelier.  For the summer the duvet cover was removed, normally its folded at the foot of the bed but I took this photo about 2 weeks ago and I like the lighter look of just the matalese coverlet at this time of year.

Since move-in date at the end of February, we've added the botanical prints, a new euro sham and a vintage look floral accent pillow.

The eyelit lace trim pillows were from Pottery Barn.  You can see the biased cut contrast piping detail of the headboard,,,like a candy stripe.

The pink bordered eurosham is from Pottery Barn and the feather filled floral pillow is from HomeSense.

It really is such a small room I wasn't able to capture the entire room or overall view in one image.  The other side of the room has the bookcase unit which still needs some filling up,, so next time I visit I'll get some more shots of that side.

I think the key to this room is that we avoided themey type bedding or accessories, the pieces we chose are all classic and can grow with her into her teen years and beyond.  The solid fabric headboard and multi toned striped skirt can be mixed with other solids and textures as well as florals, geometrics or checks so there's lots of potential to easily layer and change things up.  There's lots of room for her to display her personal things on the bookcase and on her vanity top and room on the bed and her dressers for more stuffed toys or dolls.  I was able to give her pink and flowers and sparkles and even some ruffles without it looking too granny or too babyish .........I have to say I don't even mind the Bavarian Cream so much anymore.   

All Photos:   Carol Reed