Little girl's bedroom makeover...

One of the bigger projects we did in the last year was to paint and makeover our youngest daughter's bedroom.  When we first saw this house, this was one of the rooms that I new I eventually wanted to paint.  It had lots of knotty pine paneling and while I think real wood paneling definitely has its place in an old farmhouse, I wasn't sure a little girl's bedroom was that place.

Here is what the room looked like when we first saw the house:

When we moved in we only had 2 bedrooms, so we used this room as our bedroom for a few years until I was pregnant with our second child.  We figured it was time to build a master bedroom on the first floor.  I didn't have time at that point to do the painting, etc. that I wanted and I thought maybe it would be better to wait until she was a bit older and she could help decide what kind of room she wanted.

This is what it looked like when she was just out of her crib (about 2 yrs ago):

Once we finally decided to tackle this room I knew I wanted the paneling to be white as opposed to removing it altogether.  White painted paneling has so much cottage character which I love.  It took a lot of research and steps to cover all the knots (I will share that in another post).

Ask my 4 year old daughter her favorite color and she will always say "black"!  Crazy, right? No purple, no pink or sparkles...just black!  Anyway, so when I asked her what color she wanted on the other walls (that were previously blue) and of course she said...BLACK!!  So, I thought, well why not chalkboard black?  We ended up painting the largest wall chalkboard black which looks great and Ken made a little wooden rail for chalk out of a scrap piece of wood with a routered out channel in the center.

We also let our daughter choose the color for her vintage spool bed that was mine when I was a kid.  It was originally a dark cherry color and she chose Kilkenny by Sherwin Williams.  I wanted to give it a chalk paint finish so I used a trick that my friend taught me of mixing regular latex paint with plaster to make a home made version of chalk paint (maybe I will post a tutorial on that someday too). 

We also added some new Ikea bookshelves next to the window seat for her growing book collection.  I got some new foam and simple blue fabric to create a new cushion for the window seat and I added pillows that I had made for her room when she was a baby.

I have always thought kids will put their things away if you have a good system for them to do so.  When we were doing this project I knew we needed to add some toy storage, so my husband changed the window seat storage area from a space where you need to lift up the top to open shelves with baskets and bins (which has worked great for a 4 year old).

We also kept the "cathedral window" quilt that my great aunt made as a colorful piece of art for the wall.  

And last, but not least, we moved the vintage pine dresser that we used to have in our mudroom for hats and mittens into her room for her clothes.  We paired it with an Ikea mirror that I might paint at some point.

So here again is a before and after.  We love the way it looks.  It's so much brighter and happier for a little girl's room.  I will be sharing some of the project specifics and sources next week.