A Room Reno for a 10 Year Old!

My youngest daughter just turned TEN! It’s so crazy to think she’s already in the double digits! For her birthday she wanted a room renovation. She has a tiny little room and it was SO cluttered and crowded with SO much stuff so it ALWAYS felt so messy and disorganized. So along with giving her a few new things that were more her style, we had to find ways to maximize the space in her room. In case you aren’t sure how small I mean by tiny – it’s about 7 feet by 10 feet and I know people who have closets bigger than her room! Anyway, here are a LOT of photos of what we did.

 

Some before shots – keep in mind this was a crazy weekend for us and her room was EXTRA messy with junk, plus her mattress was in her sister’s room from a sleepover the night before. This is looking toward the right from the door of the room. 

 

And this is looking toward the left from the door of the room.

This is looking straight on, you can just about see the wall on both sides of the room.

 

First we emptied out EVERYTHING we possibly could with the exception of a couple pieces of furniture. I took down the window treatments and washed the super nasty, dirty windows and window sills.

 

We FILLED my dining room with all the junk from her room! I seriously thought it looked like an episode of Hoarders and could NOT believe ALL this stuff fit into that tiny little room! Seeing all that stuff motivated me that we had to get rid of some things and make the whole room more functional for her.

 

And this is the tiny closet. There was one shelf {around where the middle one is in this photo} and one bar for hanging clothes. But her closet was always a crazy mess and she never hung her clothes up properly. So we lowered the bar and added 2 extra shelves … you’ll see in the later pics how much more efficient this makes the tiny space …

Here is the ‘in progress’ photo – the walls are painted, the doors and trim are all painted and it’s just drying overnight.

 

In the morning we moved the furniture around. This bed is fabulous because it has drawers underneath, but it also had a bookcase headboard that held a lot of junk and just took up a couple extra feet of space – so we took the headboard away and it added a bit of space to the room. Every little inch of added space was helpful!! Side note, someday we will replace the rug, for now it was not in the budget and even though there is beautiful hardwood under it we feel that it warms up the room a lot to have a rug – so that will come at a later time.

 

See how the bed now butts up against the wall instead of a headboard, she really doesn’t miss the headboard at all at this point. I also painted that little dresser. It used to be in the closet and holds her PJ’s, socks and undies – but we pulled it out to use as a nightstand and I painted it to match the room. At the last minute I decided to try the Chevron look with some scotch tape and it came out pretty good! Not perfect but good enough!

 

On the other side of the room we put 2 bookshelves. We took the desk out of her room {it was just used to hold clutter and not really functional} and we purchased the cube style bookshelf {the tall one we already owned}. The black shelves you see near the ceiling are ones a friend of ours installed for us when we were pregnant with our first baby. They hold stuffed animals, trophies, etc. and have been a WONDERFUL thing to have in a little girl’s room for all these years {especially girls who like to collect lots of things!}.

 

I tried to cover her lampshade with fabric – UGH, I should have looked up a tutorial or something because it did not turn out well. But it’s there for now until I can do something better.

 

And I re-did her bulletin board since she has pretty much outgrown her Princess theme … I got some fabric that matched the room and some ribbon and buttons to match – a whole lotta hot glue later and it turned out great!

 

Here it is hanging on the wall before putting all her little mementos on it …

And with all her stuff …

 

And here is the AFTER of her room when you look into it from the doorway … it’s so light and bright and airy now!!! She got the new bedding for her birthday and we already had the curtains.

Because she’s 10 and she still needs to be allowed to ‘make it her own’ she was allowed to put up all her posters after the room re-do was all done.

The paper lanterns in the corner were something we already owned.

 

Here is her bedside area …

And the opposite wall with some things she already had. The little shelf was something she got a long time ago but we had never gotten around to painting. So I got a can of dark purple spray paint and painted it to go in the room. It turned out so cute!

Here is her tall bookshelf filled with her stuff. We got those blue bins at Five Below and they are fantastic for holding a lot of her things. She also has her American Girl doll bunks and other doll stuff over on this side of the room.

I labeled the bins so it will be easy for her to know where things go when she needs to put stuff away. I love how the inside of the bins has the same polka dots and colors of her bedding!

 

And here is her other shelving unit filled with her stuff. I got rid of a lot of stuff so it wouldn’t be totally overloaded. The trash can in the bottom right corner was also from Five Below and matches perfectly!

On the upper shelves she has lots of things that she doesn’t use much {if at all}. Trophies, snowglobes, stuffed toys, etc. …

After we got all the shelves in the closet I painted the WHOLE thing to match the room. Amazing how the color in the closet can already make it look so much better! I didn’t worry about doing a perfect paint job since no one will ever see it closely.

 

And then we filled it back up with her stuff! The highest shelf has some blankets that are just for extra use. The middle shelf has her instrument, some hats and some bins to hold special things she likes to save. The bottom shelf has 3 green bins {that we already had} and even though they don’t really match her current décor I thought it would be silly not to use them so in the closet they work just fine. I filled them up with her crafts supplies and let me tell you she has A LOT! It was SO nice to have a place to store all that since before it all cluttered up her desk area.

I also put a little hook on the left side wall to hang her necklaces from…

 

These bins also got labels so she can keep her things organized and put away. Having the closet set up this way has helped a lot! She has so much more storage space and there is a place to put everything away now!

Finally here is one last BEFORE picture of the room ….

And the AFTER!!