One Room Challenge Week One | Boys Bedroom Makeover Before and Plans

Today I am sharing my boys bedroom makeover before and plans that I have for the Fall One Room Challenge, along with my plans for the room.

Hey friends!  Today marks the first day of the Fall One Room Challenge, and I am joining this challenge for the third time.  I will be making over my 9 year old son’s bedroom this time, and each Thursday for 6 weeks I will be posting about my progress and plans for this boy’s bedroom makeover.  You may or may not have seen my previous two ORC makeovers, and if not you can click through to see my guest/kids bathroom makeover that I completed last fall, and my downstairs bathroom makeover that I completed in the spring.

If you have not heard of the One Room Challenge (also called ORC), currently in its twelfth season, is a widely anticipated biannual event every April and October.  Each round, twenty design bloggers take the challenge and transform a space.  It is hosted by Calling It Home and House Beautiful.  Wednesdays is the day for the design bloggers to go live with their progress, and Thursdays is the day for all the guest participants to go live.  You guys will be amazed at these reveals, they are just beyond words good!

If you found me through the ORC Link up, welcome!  I am so happy you are here!  My name is Nicki and I am the blogger behind Sweet Parrish Place.  I love to share our DIY and home decor shenanigans, along with some organization, fashion, travel and other lifestyle types of topics.  Thanks for reading!  

I love participating in these challenges because it helps light a fire under me to get stuff done!  Below are the before photos of my son’s bedroom.  The first three are his room shortly after we moved in when he was still in a toddler bed.  We pretty much just took everything from his bedroom at our old house and plopped it in here.  We didn’t even paint the walls because they had been freshly painted and they didn’t clash with what was gong on in the room.  And at the time, we had bigger fish to fry.  I’m almost embarrassed to show these photos on the blog now.  But I guess it will make the finished space look all that much better, because these are bad.  So fair warning.

About 4-5 years ago, we replaced the toddler bed with a loft bed that was a hand me down from my older son when he outgrew it.  But we still didn’t change much else in the room besides the curtains.  That loft bed was the worst!  I am gonna be honest, it rarely got made unless we were having company or I needed to change the sheets.  I will never buy another one, I tell ya!  But he enjoyed having it for a period.  And that train table?  It took up most of the room.

I started working on him about a year ago and told him that whenever he was finally ready to part with the train table we would make over his bedroom.  And he started getting tired of the loft bed as well.  He wanted a bed on the floor with a nightstand to sit stuff on.  But that wouldn’t be possible unless he was willing to part with the train table.  It took a lot of scheming and talking him into it, but he finally decided he was ready to part with it, and our plans for a boys bedroom makeover were underway!

We started working on this over the summer and got the room painted, sold the loft bed and the train table, and did a major purge of toys and stuffed animals.  My son has a difficult time parting with his things, so it was a huge feat to get him on board for this.  But he really did great!  He was ready to have a more grown up space for himself.  This is a photo of the room when I was in process of painting.  I painted the bottom half of the room, underneath the chair rail white.  I used a Benjamin Moore color called Simply White, but had it custom mixed using Glidden paint.

I painted the top half of the walls a Martha Stewart color called Sea Glass and had that mixed using Glidden paint as well.  My son helped me with these choices, and he really wanted a bedroom this color.

Obviously we moved him back into the room already, but I decided to wait a bit and finish this space for the One Room Challenge.  I also already made a DIY headboard for his bedroom because I received the materials for free and the company I worked with on this wanted the post done sooner.  You can read about his DIY headboard here.

I still have lots to do and show you in the boys bedroom makeover over the next 5 or so weeks, so I hope you will check back every Thursday to see where I am with it.  I will be sharing a new dresser and desk that we brought in.  Both of them are vintage pieces, the dresser was a Craigslist find and the desk and matching chair was given to me by a friend.  I also will be making over a cabinet that my neighbor gave to us that will be used to contain toys.  Here is a mood board I made with my vision for the room.  With my son’s help of course!

We will be changing out the blinds on the one window in the room, and adding new accessories and decor.  My son will be taking a big part in the choices that are made for this room.  This is the place where he spends a great deal of time, and I want his bedroom to be a reflection of the things he loves.

My 9 year old boy is not your average boy.  He is very creative and artsy.  He doesn’t like sports or athletics much at all, aside from swimming, which he does during the summer months.  He still loves to play with toys, and he is really into arts and crafts, and he is a collector at heart.  So his bedroom is not going to be your typical boys bedroom makeover.  It is going to be a refection of his unique personality and interests.

I am picturing it all in my mind as a gently masculine bedroom.  It is not going to scream boy.  So I am going to do my best to ensure that it doesn’t look like a girls bedroom, but it will have a more feminine flair than some 9 year old boys bedrooms might.  My older son had a Pittsburgh Steelers bedroom when he was 9.  My younger son would never be interested in anything like that!  It is amazing how differently each of my children are and yet I gave birth to all three.  But all three have very unique personalities for sure.

We are excited to get this room finished, that is for sure!  He is loving the progress of the room so far.  I’ll be back next week to share more of this boys bedroom makeover.  Stay tuned!