The {Mostly} Finished Big Girl Room

Well here it is! The "Big Girl" room is finally done, save for a few small minor decorative details. OK, so yes that basically means it's only painted. But if you recall, that was my main goal for now. It may have taken a little longer than originally planned, but if you consider a handful of unforeseen snags in addition to working around a toddler who uses that room, I don't think I did half bad.

Just as a quick refresher, we started with plain walls. I added a board & batten wall treatment that I assembled myself, and then painted. I'll give basic tutorial info with each photo.

First things first, I went to Lowes and had them cut a 4'x8' sheet of MDF into strips. I asked for 8 strips 4" wide, and about 20 strips 2" wide x 39" tall. Lots of tutorials for this project that I've seen online were very reassuring that Lowes will do all of your cuts for you making your project a breeze. Ok, well as I was standing there after showing the kind gentlemen my diagram of how I wanted the 4'x8' sheet cut up, I noticed a sign that stated, "The first 2 cuts are free, for bigger jobs we sell saws in the Tool Department." Eeek! I felt horrible. The guys were super nice though and didn't even charge me. My advice though: don't go into Lowes assuming that they're happy to make 692 cuts for you because they're really not supposed to even if they will :-/  

I began by mitering the bottoms of my 2" vertical strips so that they weren't a blunt square edge where they met the baseboards. Then I went around the room and measured out where each one would go. This is when I did my leveling and just made a simple pencil mark on the wall so that when it was time to do the application it was pretty quick and easy (I did double check and re-level at that time though). Once that was done, I applied the strips to the walls with some adhesive (like Liquid Nails) and 3 brad nails each. Then I placed the 4" strips horizontally across the tops of the vertical strips to make a chair rail-like border around the room. After all the wood was applied I used wood putty and a molding caulk to fill in any gaps.

I used Lowes zero-VOC paint + primer in a semi-gloss white for the woodwork and below. I gave all the woodwork a first coat of paint since it was completely unfinished to start with. Then I did a second coat over everything with a roller.

Then of course, all that was left was to paint the top half of the walls in our mixed paint color. I also used the zero-VOC paint + primer for that and had Lowes color-match it to Sherwin Williams' Open Air. It looks plain blue in this photo, but it's actually quite turquoise.

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Here are some photos once the room was reassembled. You'll notice the lack of 'finished' details. Try to keep in mind that I'll be adding a bedskirt to hide the trundle, a coordinating quilt, and valence over the window. Since her absolute favorite color everything is PINK, I'll be doing all of those accents in varying shades of pink.

We're also still using an Ikea end table to pile some of her favorite bed time books on, for now. We'll be replacing that this week with the Ikea spice-rack book holders of Pinterest fame for a nice thin profile (as you can see, its a small space so maximizing is important). We'll also add a bean bag chair or other type of cozy seat to make that a perfect little reading corner for her.

Our girls' rooms, side-by-side!

So there we are! 

And the baby-prep to-do list continues :)