My Sweet Girl’s {Princess Room}

My daughter’s bedroom has been an ongoing project since we moved in. While we were in the build process we had done a board-and-batten wainscotting on two walls and installed some wallpaper on the window wall. However, try as I might she refused to sleep in her own room when we moved in. She had enjoyed sharing a room with her brothers while we were in our rental and didn’t want to have her own room when we got to the new house (the boys were less than thrilled about having her as a roommate 🙂 but they “let her” stay in their room anyway). So her room was more of a glorified playroom and closet for the last couple of years. This year we decided it was time for her to move out of the boy’s room and into her own. And in order to do that… I obviously needed to entice her by making the space a room fit for a princess 😉 so we went to work…

Here are some before shots of the space from when we moved in 4 years ago. Again, it was pretty to start with… just not really put together or “done” in my mind.

The first thing that needed to go was the light fixture. Unfortunately, the one I had initially bought for the space (from Etsy) our electrician said he wouldn’t install because of some Washington code issue (boo!) and since there wasn’t enough time to order a new one before closing on our home loan, we went to Lowe’s and got something to work for the time being. I found this fixture on Amazon (linked below) and it was a similar look to the Etsy one, so I went with it (and this time my electrician … aka: my husband, had no objections 😉 ). Leighton (my daughter) oversaw the replacement and loved it so this felt like a good step in the right direction! It made the room so much brighter!

Next, I wanted to move her bed away from the wall (we had it in multiple locations in her room over the years) and I wanted it moved to be centered in the room. Then with it now being a focal point… it seemed like a great idea to do a wall treatment on the “bed wall”.

I really loved the look of this wall (but in white) and felt like it would tie in well with the existing board-and-batten:

Since it was going to be the whole wall, I didn’t want to do brown-board as the base… it’s a pain to nail into and just a pain to work with…. not to mention the prices have gone way up on that stuff since we started doing board-and-batten projects. I did some research online and found a blog posts on how you can sand off wall texture… figured it was worth a shot (and worst case scenario we’d just cover it with brown board!) We don’t have really intense texture on our walls so the process wasn’t super difficult – but it was a decent amount of work… and messy! We taped off the whole area we were working on to help contain the dust!

1. First step was to do an initial sanding of the wall. We started with a large sandpaper block and then quickly resorted to our electric sander (think smarter not harder 😉 )
2. Then we put a thin layer of (watered down) joint compound on the wall with a sheet rock puddy knife
3. Then sanding. lots of sanding
4. Then wiping down the wall (Chris found vacuuming to be the most effective) because you want to get all that dust off between coats
5. Then joint compound again
6. Then sanding & cleaning the wall
7. We touched up any spot that we felt needed it (basically if it felt bumpy to the touch)
8. Finally, we did a coat of Sheetrock primer on the smooth wall!
9. Last step was to paint it the ending color (which I did a stock white). It took a total of two coats of paint after the primer.

Once that portion of the wall was done, we were ready to start adding trim. We mimicked the board and batten on the adjacent wall for the height & spacing of the lower “boxes” and then instead of doing the picture-ledge portion, we continued the trim to the ceiling. Then to add some more detail we trimmed the inside of each box with a decorative PVC trim detail and added crown for that added elegance!

Once that was done, back went back up our containment tent (aka: plastic taped from the ceiling to the floor) and I sprayed everything with a stock white paint.

I LOVED it and so did Leighton – at this point she was ready to “move in”

After finishing that wall, I decided to add the PVC trim detail to the existing board and batten and gave it another fresh coat of white paint:

Once that was done it was time to rearrange and get it styled. We ordered a new rug that felt more proportionate to the space, got a set of matching lamps (that she picked out herself at Home Goods) and a new comforter (a beddy!) but kept pretty much everything else the same. I was so excited to finally get this space put together!!

| The Reveal |

Finally done! How is this not the sweetest room ever?! I fricken love it! I want to move in… hahaha!

Every time I’m in this room I can’t help but smile. It’s such a happy, perfect princess room! And my daughter loves it – so that in itself makes it all worth it!

Excited for the next project… but for now, I am going to go lay on her bed and just smile and take it all in. Love this DIY journey and all the beauty it creates in our home!

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