Bronwyn's Room Transformation

The last time I blogged, I was at the end of my whirlwind "take the girls to college" trip to the US.  It was a great trip, but I came back pretty tired and needing to spend some good time with my boys who stayed here in Porto Alegre.

Well, 3 weeks has gone by and I finally feel like I'm rested up and ready to take care of all the stuff I need to take care of!  Make sense??  

So, the one thing that I didn't show you from our trip was Bronwyn's room.  We all (my mother in law, Carys, Bronwyn, Stephen, and myself ) spent a lot of time working on her room during the week.  I had been bugging Bronwyn about sending me the "after" pictures, and last week she finally did.  So... here we go:

I'm sorry to say that this is the only "before" picture that I took.  I wish I had taken more, because this room really underwent an impressive transformation that can only be truly appreciated if you saw the way it was before.  Her room is actually part of the garage that was closed in to make an extra bedroom.  This hadn't been done by a professional.  The walls are kind of just pieced together and there were big cracks in the corners.  The room was painted white, with the baseboards and all around the window and doors painted black.  And there were some lovely heavy black curtains sadly hanging in the window.

   My mother-in-law and I decided pretty soon that the whole room needed to be repainted.  While I went to meetings with Ansley, Bronwyn and Marie (my MIL) painted the black trim with white enamel paint.  There was a lot of taping involved and a lot of care taken not to get the carpet dirty.  But, they got it done and did a great job.  Just covering the black made a huge difference.

 Bronwyn picked out a beige color for the walls...

 And we rolled and painted 2 coats on all the walls, except one.

 Looking so much better already!

 For the wall that her bed would be against, Bronwyn picked out a pretty salmon pink color.  She wanted the room colors to be salmon/coral with brown.

 Here is a picture of Bronwyn's bed before:

She bought it from a friend last year and got a good deal on it.  She liked that it had storage, but it wasn't comfortable to lean back against it, so we did a little bed makeover.

 After painting it, we made a cushioned board and connected it with hinges at the bottom of the shelves to make a cover for the shelves.  It stays closed with velcro at the top.

 We bought a curtain panel for the window and a really cheap sheer one for the closet.

Here are the final pictures:  

Stephen snagged this couch when ACU got new dorm lobby furniture.  It fit in and matched perfectly.  We made those salmon colored pillows using this tutorial since we didn't have a sewing machine handy. (yeah, Pinterest!)

The picture above the couch is a poster of a picture that Stephen took of Bronwyn sitting on a pier during their trip to the Amazon this summer. 

This coffee table was given to Bronwyn by a friend of ours in Memphis.  It was a dark brown stain.  we took it apart and painted it cream with the pinkish legs. It looked so cute.

The bookshelf came from Stephen's family.  Bronwyn made the little chalkboard (which still has Anderson's name that he wrote on there).  We bought the mirror for 6.00 at at flea market in Abilene and painted it.  The little table was from my parents.  

This is the left wall of her room.  It was the one in the worst shape (half the wall was concrete, the other half some pieced together plaster things that hadn't been pieced together very well.)  To cover up the bad shape of the wall, we covered two foam core boards with fabric and hung them on either side of the bulletin board which we had also covered with coordinating fabric.  Bronwyn bought her desk for a good price last year.  It's "shabby chic".

Just a shot of the closet and window with new curtains.

This is my favorite part:  Bronwyn worked on these embroidery hoops all summer.  Some are embroidered, some have doilies (thanks, Granna!), some are just fabric, some have felt flowers, and one is just string wrapped around a hoop.  Put all together, they looked so good behind her bed.  The little table beside the bed was from my parents.  It was bright orange when they bought it, but they stripped it and painted it this creamy color.  It went perfectly beside her bed.  The lamp, we found at a thrift store in Abilene for $10.  Bronwyn has had her brown bedspread since her freshman year.  Every year we have made new pillows.  My mom made these two pillows for her bed to coordinate with her colors.

So, that is it!  It turned out so cute and it was fun to work on!  Thanks to everyone who helped us - the grandparents and friends who donated furniture - and all the people who spent time working on everything in the room.

Hopefully Bronwyn will have lots of good times (and lots of good studying) in this room!