Spring 2019 One Room Challenge – Big Girl Room Final Reveal

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We made it!! It’s finally reveal day for the One Room Challenge and I am so excited to share this with you guys!

After 6 grueling weeks of design, sweat, blood and curse words (at least for me), the ORC featured designers and hundreds of guest bloggers are ready to share their final products with the world. I am so happy you have decided to stop by and check out my Big Girl Room transformation!

If you are new to my blog, welcome! My name is Michelle and I am new to the blogging world. I started this up to chronicle my family’s journey to a more fulfilling life through our real estate investing. While I share a lot of our investing stories, the freedom it has allowed me to have means I get to dedicate a lot more time to some of my hobbies – travel, DIY renovations and furniture.

These past six weeks have truly been something else – we are managing a major break-it-down-to-the-studs renovation on an investment property, ramping up for managing a second huge rehab for my parents’ investment, entertaining a toddler and trying to keep the rest of our house from falling completely off the radar while we renovate our daughter’s room.

Thanks to the deadline and inspiration, her room is now easily the most beautiful in our home (I may or may not be jealous of her room). I have had so much great feedback about some of the pieces I found that I have signed up to let you shop the room (at least on Amazon).

We chose the nursery because E did so well transitioning from the crib to the toddler bed. For her reward, she got to choose what she wanted her big girl room to look like and WOW did she come through! At 3, who would have guessed she had incredible design instincts? 😉

Now, let’s take a look at where we’ve been and where we landed!

Introduction – What Room We Chose | Week 1 – Inspiration and Before Pictures | Week 2 – Cabin Bed Begins| Week 3 – Cabin Bed Progressing | Week 4 – Finishing the Cabin Bed | Week 5 – Demolition, Flooring, Painting

First up, the humble beginnings of her nursery:

Now (drumroll!!) presenting the big girl room! Goodbye carpet, hello hand-scraped acacia engineered hardwood. Goodbye clutter, hello creative storage ideas. Goodbye basic bed, hello amazing cabin bed.

E wanted to go with a cabin/woodlands theme, incorporating a gray, white and pink color palette. The challenge for me was that there were plenty of adventure/woodlands kids room stuff out there for boys but not a lot for girls. Girls like to explore the great outdoors too! Thankfully, Amazon really came in handy for me, the lazy decorator.

Each piece that was conveniently delivered straight to my front door is linked up below. 🙂

I can’t even TELL YOU how proud I am of this cabin bed. Almost every single piece of her furniture I have in her room is either built completely from scratch or up-cycled. Due to the magnificence of this cabin bed, I decided that it needed to be the main focus of the room when you walk through the door.

If you remember from our inspiration post, I was planning on planking that wall with ship lap. However, once the cabin bed went in and the floors and paint were wrapped up, I started to realize that A, I was running out of time and B, it would darken the room too much. The cabin bed already takes out one window in this room and, while the light still shines through the bed, I didn’t want to push it.

I will tell you that this is probably Lola’s favorite rug in the whole world! She is always laying around on it and is such a great, photogenic puppy – watching me with those big eyes until I was done snapping the picture. I didn’t want to spend an arm and a leg on texture rugs and had no idea where I could find them out there in the retail world, so instead I got them shipped to me in two days. Winning!

I was able to find this Chanasya Faux Sheepskin Rug in various lengths pretty quickly, and they didn’t break the bank. The main gray rug also came delivered to me, and I think it was the perfect color and pattern for her room.

I absolutely love the inside of her bed! It is so cozy and brings in a lot of the colors and textures I was going for. The bedding, by Sweet JoJo Designs, went so well with the throw pillow covers I found. E just fell in love with that lantern, too – she is so proud that she can safely turn it on and off all by herself – like a big girl! It helps that it looks fantastic for only $13. It also has a dimmer switch, so you can adjust the brightness for bedtime stories.

I really liked the floating tent reading nook thought, but wasn’t sure how I was going to fit it in with a woodlands theme. I ended up bringing the pink in with the canopy and the woodlands theme with a branch-like reading lamp, the rug and textured pillow, and my favorite find of this corner – the beanbag chair. Not just any beanbag chair – it actually serves two purposes! Do you remember my toy storage issue? Partially solved here. You stuff tons of stuffed animals and extra bedding into that bag and it turns into the most comfortable chair ever. I was skeptical at first, but I have nearly passed out in it on multiple occasions while helping her wind down before bedtime. I think the comfort levels are pretty up there. I chose the arrow print, but there are so many choices. This is my newest MUST HAVE for a kids room!

I found this Better Homes and Gardens reading lamp at Walmart, and was so happy to see so many woodsy things down that aisle. There was one with antlers, but I felt that was more of my husband’s deal!

This is a neat piece – I picked it up several years ago while I was studying abroad in Rome. Each Sunday, there is an open air art market at Piazza Navona. We stumbled into it one day as we were probably lost, trying to find something else. As a student, I didn’t have much money with me, so I ended up purchasing a small, hand painted piece that would remind me of the Tuscan countryside when I returned home.

It actually helped me out as I was struggling with the cabin bed paint scheme. Someone had recommended a natural stain for cabin, and while I knew I wanted to paint it to keep with the color schemes, I really liked that idea. I was constantly thinking about how I could incorporate it, when I came across this painting in a closet – I saw the Tuscan farm house and it immediately clicked. The roof could bring in the natural stain and the main body of the cabin could be painted white.

So, while this little painting is much too small to hang on a wall by itself, I decided to set it up on her shelves – the inspiration behind the cabin bed’s paint scheme!

I found this awesome bedside table at Ross for only $30 – I was so excited and E spotted it from across the store, yelling – “Mommy, that one!!” I found a similar one here if you, like me, hate braving the retail stores. I know, I know – I saved so much money going to search for this, but it very well could have not been there. Plus! It is hard going shopping when you don’t know exactly what you are looking for in the first place – especially with a toddler.

That day ended with a MASSIVE meltdown in the middle of the ice cream store, and I was running out to the car with two ice cream cones just melting streaming down my arms, screaming child following in my footsteps. Such is the life, right? We all recovered.

The next day, as I was getting ready to take pictures, I was noticing that one of the corners in the room just was so empty. It looked so lonely compared to the rest of the room. I had failed in my quest to find something that could serve as a toy box while also fitting into her theme. I was wandering around my house looking for something, anything, to fill that corner, when I headed to the garage and immediately noticed this old cedar Hunter fan box that had been sitting in a corner for YEARS. Turns out that it used to be my husband’s toy box when he was growing up! How fun is that?? It was a perfect fit. I cleaned off all of the spiders and gave it a nice wash with some Murphy’s Oil Soap. I am proud of that spontaneous find!

When it came to the wall art, I ran into a wall… ha! I didn’t like any of the canvas art I was finding and didn’t care for the prints either. So, I opted to go with something different – I chose metal artwork of a bear walking through the pine trees. It reminded me of the trip I took to Alaska to go fishing with my dad and I knew it would be perfect for her room.

I had a stem arrangement in her nursery before, but I added a few from Hearth and Hand at Target to bring more greenery into the scene – hello woodlands!

I decided to keep the elephant closet knobs – I know they aren’t truly woodland animals, but they were some of my favorite finds for her nursery and I still think they are the cutest. Also, I am definitely not painting over her growth milestones!

This letter board I picked up at Ross is a fun trend I can get behind! We try to encourage E to be outside as much as possible, exploring and finding ways to cultivate her creativity. This little quote fits that so perfectly.

Another great thing about the cabin bed is that it provides an opportunity for under the bed storage for toys! Yay for less clutter!

Finally, true to my previous posts – enjoy this short, off the hip video to give you a little bit of a walk-in experience!

To wrap things up, below is a full list of all of the products I used (or if I bought them elsewhere something really similar) to renovate/decorate her room – all at links where they can just magically appear on your front porch soon!

Chanasya Faux Sheepskin Rugs | Antep Rugs Kashan King Collection Indoor Area Rug | Elegant Chic Throw Blanket | Sweet JoJo Designs Bedding | Linen Throw Pillow Cover | WeatherRite Lantern | MyMoon Girls Canopy Reading Nook | MiniOwls Bean Bag Cover for Stuffed Animal Storage| BHG Branch Reading Lamp | Wooden Storage Trunk | Tree Trunk Wood End Table | Young’s Laser Cut Metal Bear Wall Art | Hanging Letter Board | Hand Scraped Acacia Flooring at Lowe’s | Pergo Gold Underlay

Thank you all so much for following along for this wild ride. I am so grateful for the chance to participate and for all of the love and support I’ve received from everyone! I can’t wait to do it again in the fall! Be sure to check out the other amazing, talented people who have participated in this Spring challenge at the One Room Challenge Blog.

Now what am I going to write about??

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