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Three years ago, we started renovating our house. I’m sure you’re wondering what we have been doing for three years, but this is not your average renovation. We raised our turn-of-the-century Queenslander and extended to the side.
We added 3 new kids' bedrooms, a master walk-in, and a family bathroom, and we are doing it ourselves, so it takes time.
View the bathroom renovation HERE.
Today’s post is all about Connor’s room. It took me a while to get the design right in my head as I wanted it to be a fun boys room with a dash of magic.
We started by sheeting the room with VJ board, patched the nail holes and sanded.
I love starting with a neutral base so painted the walls, ceiling and trim Dulux Vivid white. And stained the new flooring Feast Watson Black, I chose a darker colour to minimise the transition between 100 year old flooring and the new flooring.
To save money we laid the flooring ourselves, we used hoop pine in the same size as the original house.
View the flooring HERE
To tie in the bedrooms to the original house we added some DIY fret work about the doors and added period doors. When renovating an old house the key is to make the transitions as seamless as possible. That means tying in flooring and bringing old features through to the remainder of the house.
View FRET work here
We found windows that matched the original windows in the house, sanded, painted and installed them. I bought some simple pull down blinds from Bunnings to block out light and flanked the windows with our DIY curtains, made from linen tablecloths. The best way to create a sense of space to a room is to raise your curtains to the ceilings and take them to the outside of the windows. As we had 3m ceilings and 1.8m wide windows the cost of pre made linen curtains was prohibitive.
View DIY curtains HERE
We moved Connors bed in and then could focus on making this room a sanctuary for him.
The walls felt so bare so I had an idea to add some bunting to add some fun and provide some fun lighting. I found some scrap materials at mums house, choosing a blue and mustard theme I chose 4 different patterns and colours and cut them to equal sizes. I had mum run the machine over the top to create a loop, you could do this using hemming tape if you don’t have a machine handy and threaded through some chord. We strung them onto the wall using a nail and weaved in some fun fairy lights.
I found the most amazing vintage writing desk whilst thrifting, I did plan to paint it or stain it but Connor loved it so I figure it will be a project for another day.
Connor has a lot of toy cars so we made a toy car storage using left over VJ panels and upcycled an old sandpit truck to make it fun, we added some lights to second as a night light.
View Full Toy Car Storage project here
https://www.workshop.bunnings.com.au/t5/Featured-Projects/Toy-car-wall-display-unit/ta-p/191502
Connor loves his art work so instead of buying art we reused his own paintings as wall decor.
To cosy up his room we added a rug, that he chose.
The final project will be his wardrobe and I have a fun idea to personalise it, I’ll share that with you soon.
Happy DIY'ing
Claire
Materials
Dulux Vivid White interior paint
Black Feast Watson Stain and reducer
Curtain Rod
Linen Table cloths
Fabric
Screws
Tools
Framing nailer
Orbital Sander
Sanding Block
Screw Driver
I believe you've got the pups seal of approval as they are very relaxed on that carpet rug. I love your colour choice for the floor, it's like a feature wall unto itself. The car storage is just fantastic, and I may have to borrow that idea of using it as a night light. It's a fantastic transformation and I'm sure your kids are loving it.
Thank you for sharing such a wonderful project.
Eric
