From Boy to Girl

This room kind of cracks me up.  It was a little boy’s room when we moved in our house.  We’re talking pastel blue; wait, two shades of blue actually.  We definitely weren’t crazy about the paint choice in this bedroom.  Not that it’s terrible, because it’s cute for a little boy’s room, but I guess we’re just not big “blue” people.  Here’s the original listing photo:

It’s amazing how the picture in the listing makes the room look much bigger than it actually is.  I guess that’s a common little realtor’s trick. 

Anyway,  I always loved the idea of having a dressing room, where I can get ready and have my own little chic space.  We decided this room would be perfect for me, because it has a big closet (the closet in our bedroom actually would’ve worked too, but then there wouldn’t have been any room for our shoes!) So we figured it made more sense to leave all John’s clothes and shoes in our bedroom closet and all mine in the soon to be dressing room.  Actually, that just sounds way too proper, so I’m going to call it my girly room

First was the painting.  We measured how high we were going to put the chair rail, and used a pencil to make a mark about every 2 feet on the wall.  John also measured the circumference of the room to determine how much chair rail we’d need. 

Then we were off to the home improvement store.  We bought a gallon of Glidden’s Granite Grey and a gallon of Olympic’s Cool Melon, both in eggshell.  We’ve found that both eggshell and satin are good in bedrooms, living rooms, and home office.  And a gloss finish is great in the kitchen and bathrooms because it can be wiped-off easier.  We also picked up our chair rail, which is a different kind than the one we used in our front room revamp.  We went with a taller one for my girly room because it was going to be all by itself up on the wall, so it needed to be a little more substantial in order to look right.

We painted the bottom portion Cool Melon and the top Granite Grey, and we used those marks we made on the wall to guide us on how far to either go up or down the wall, depending on which color we were using at the time.  I was going for a shabby chic meets glam look.  And this is what the once blue boy’s room has become:

Don’t worry, the chair got a little makeover too (more on that tomorrow).  Oh and that picture frame, ha! I hadn’t put a picture in there yet.  That still cracks me up when I look at this picture.

But back to the newly painted walls, the pink is a little more on the pastel side than what I was hoping for, so I may repaint it at some point to get more of a mauve pink.  Something like this, found on marthastewart.com.

But for now, it’ll do just fine!  A consignment shop is where we snagged the shabby chic vanity for this room.  After doing a ton of looking, we finally found this one, and the price definitely wasn’t cheap at $200, but compared to several others we had our eye on, (in the $400-$500 range) this one was a bargain!  It was actually originally priced at $250, but the day we went in to buy it, the dealer (who is a woman who buys furniture from people and puts it in several different consignment shops) happened to stop in while we were there, and after John and I stood there contemplating for a few minutes, she piped in and said that she’d give it to us for $200. Sold! 

It’s definitely got the shabby chic thing down.  I love this worn look:

And I’m really loving that worn look with a little glam mixed in.  So we switched the knobs on the closet doors from this:

to a simple and clean look with these:

Gotta love the details! I’m loving my new girly room!  We definitely have some things in mind to add to it (perhaps some crazy artwork made out of mirrors, and some pictures) but it’s well on its way! 

As for the vanity chair, we picked that up at Home Goods, and I will tell you all about its complete makeover, or makeovers rather, tomorrow.  So stay tuned!  In the meantime, we’d love to see your room transformations.  Any shabby chicness going on?!  What about pink or gray?

Oh and if you’re wondering when the heck we’re going to do a Christmas post, that’s coming right up

Update!!…. You can check out the vanity chair makeover in this post!