Claire's Big Reveal

For part of Christmas and her birthday, we gave Claire a bedroom makeover, including a cool, collegiate loft bed and new curtains. The idea was to take Claire's room from "little-girl cuteness to preteen coolness"--so said her note from Santa.

When we first moved in, I painted Claire's room lavender (with great help from Travis). Claire also decorated her room with lots of Hello Kitty accessories. We called it her "Hello Kitty haven."

One of the problems with her old room was stuffing too many pieces of furniture into the small space. Once I settled on the idea of a loft bed, I was convinced that would help alleviate some of the issues.

She also had too much stuff--toys, junk, trash, unused TV, and clothes--squeezed into the poorly organized space.  

 

We spent half a day going through her closet and drawers, gathering many bags of trash and boxes of stuff for giveaway. Claire was such a trooper embracing the minimalist attitude and being ruthless about extra stuff. After cleaning out her room, we had a huge pile of trash and a full front porch for the National Kidney Foundation to pick up. Plus, we found good homes for Claire's old end tables and the DVD player.

During our work weekend with Mom, Dad, and Travis here, we painted Claire's room and several pieces of furniture to give her room a completely new look. Mr. Morgan 's steady hand painted the trim, while the rest of us split time putting two coats of Gleeful on the walls and multiple coats of Begonia on the bed.

Claire also decided she wanted her desk chair painted lime green like the walls, and she wanted a combination of both colors on her chest of drawers. With so many helpers, we were able to finish all the painting that weekend.

This past week Mr. Morgan and I have been busy putting the finishing touches on her room--buying, returning, and rebuying new drawer pulls and knobs for her chest of drawers; switching her fan blades to shorter ones; assembling her new bookcase; cutting her closet shelf to make room for the long, hanging shoe holder; and hanging her artwork and other things on the walls. We're finally picture-ready, though we still lack the curtains; Mimi's working on the window treatments using the fabric that Claire picked out.

Claire's cheap, white, freshly cleaned desk has a new place of prominence under her loft bed, and her closet is much more organized with less stuff crowding the shelves.

Claire's favorite part of her room has been the wall stickers. We found big, pink dots that came with a dry-erase marker for notes, and she's enjoyed forming words and phrases with the pink letters--fun!, shh! be quiet, cool!, and Claire's art area.