Bedroom Update for a Tween Girl (Chalkboard Doors and a Giant Pom-Pom Garland)
Once upon a time there was a 7 year old girl who had just moved into a new home with her family. She was going to be moving into a basement bedroom for the first time and her Mommy and Daddy wanted it to be a really special space in order to help her transition into sleeping a farther away from them.
Her Daddy let her pick out the paint color all by herself, without any input from Mommy. (Her Daddy is a wonderful and supportive man and works very hard and is extremely handsome and an excellent father. This is probably the only mistake he’s ever made.) They brought the paint home and surprised Mommy with it. She was surprised! But, they could not return the paint.
So, the family worked together and painted the little girl’s room a bright eye-damaging purple (see photo above). She loved it, for a while. And then she didn’t. (Her wise and powerful Mommy knew this would happen.) After about a year of hinting to her parents that it was time to change the paint, on her 10th birthday, she was given a homemade gift certificate to repaint her bedroom.
She was delighted and a few months later the work was complete. Don’t judge me…painting is a big job.
We went with a neutral color for the walls so we could add a lot of color in the decor and so that our design-loving girl could change up the look of her room more frequently. Her bookshelf was a yard sale find a couple of years ago. I painted it white to go in her purple room and added the bright green paint to make the bookshelf pop once we painted the walls white.
Ellie and I painted the polka dot canvas together for a Mommy-Daughter date one evening. We also made the giant pom-pom garland using up a huge pile of my leftover yarn. Hooray for stash busting projects! (find an excellent tutorial here).
My favorite update to the room is the chalkboard paint closet doors. This was such an incredibly easy project. I took the doors off the hinges and added 3 coats of chalkboard paint (no taping required!). Ellie and I put the doors back up and that was that.
She updates the doors weekly with her schedule, the weather so she’ll know what to wear (isn’t that adorable?), words of encouragement and reminder notes.
She is so happy with how her room update turned out, and so am I. It is the perfect space for her to read, relax and create without burning her eyeballs on neon purple paint.
Heidi Hillman
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