And we're back with Part 2 of Tre's bedroom makeover and pretty excited about the final result!  In fact, my husband and I might even be a little bit jealous that it's not our room.  If you need a review of Part 1 of the makeover, click here.

 

As we touched on in Part 1, Tre's room is quite small (about 9.5' x 9.5') and seemed to become even smaller once we added a full size bed to the middle of it.  We inevitably needed to come up with some solutions for furniture and storage that would not take up too much more space in the room and that would make the room feel larger.  Here's five ways that we did it:

I styled the bookcase for him when he was gone at his mom's house for a few days so I wasn't sure how he was going to feel about me adding in some of his kid stuff like his batman piggy bank and stuffed puppy that used to be his dad's when he was a kid.  He hasn't mentioned it yet, so I think he's okay with it.  Both the bookcase and this surfboard were in his room pre-makeover.  The surfboard is actually a shelf that used to be mounted on his wall, but we thought it looked cooler standing like this on the floor. 

Baskets, baskets, and more baskets are the way to keep it looking organized, even if it's not.  The big basket on the floor has all of his stuffed animals in it.   The baskets in his floating nightstand house extra masks, phone chargers, his wallet, etc.  

To style the room, I got him bright white new bedding to offset the dark green walls.  Of course I also used a throw pillow from my shop!  The "Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat" art is Tre's favorite and he got really excited when he saw that I got it for him.  He's like any other kid his age and is completely obsessed with video games.

Neil and I were originally thinking that we might surprise Tre with a flat screen TV for this wall.  In the past, we've been seriously against tv's in the kids' rooms.  However, we thought it would be a nice treat for him given the tough year that he's had to deal with.  We quickly reassessed this idea, though, based on the amount of time he wants to spend on his tablet and decided he has plenty of screen time without adding a TV to the mix. We therefore kept this world map that he had before the makeover, which is actually quite special because one of our very good family friends gifted it to Tre when he was little and then my dad made this beautiful hanger for it.

Just to refresh our memory, this is what the room looked like before...

And this is what it looks like now...

Tre seems to be happy with it and that's all that really matters.  (Our cat, Kenji, seems to approve of the room, too!)  Tre's about to turn 13 in April, which oh my gosh, makes me want to cry.  He's at the age now where all he wants to do is hang out in his room with the door closed.  I remember being that way when I was in my teens.  Hopefully he still loves us for a few years longer.  Maybe making over his room will help prolong that time a little longer.  😄  

If there's ever a chance that you read this, Tre, your dad and I love you so much!

See links below for sources!

Ceiling light fixture:  Amazon

Wall Sconces:  Amazon

Bed with Drawers:  Ikea

Etsy Video Game Downloadable Prints:  "Eat, Sleep, Game, Repeat" & Xbox Console

Duvet Cover:  Amazon

Bed Sheets:  Target

Cloth Baskets:  Home Goods

Small navy blue baskets:  Ikea

Green metal desk container:  Ikea

Runner Rug:  Target

Paint:  "Retreat" by Sherwin Williams 

Turkish Kilim Pillow:  Velvet & Shag

Roman Shade:  Select Blinds (Color is Nautical Navy)

Shelf Brackets:  Amazon

So we made it to Friday, folks.  Let's celebrate a little bit, why don't we, with a little round up of some of my favorites from a good healthy dose of internet perusing this week.  

How about these gorgeous drawer pulls?  I have a few builder grade bathrooms that still have no drawer pulls at all whatsoever.  They're like a blank slate just waiting to be decorated.  I really don't know how I stand it.  😀 These ones by BestHardwareStore on Etsy would do just the trick.

At some point I'm inevitably going to tire of the birch tree stencil I did on the wall in our front entry.  Decor ADD is the affliction I live with.  This lovely art deco vibed removable wallpaper by Spoonflower would easily tide me over for a year or two.

I'm totally in love with basically all macrame wall hangings right now. This one by The Full Circle Finds has all of the vintage charm that I'm known for falling victim to. 

Jess Bunge, the editorial director of the Emily Henderson blog, made over her living room a couple of years ago and I just can't get over it.  Click here to be inspired by her tour and perhaps drive your husband crazy with all your new ideas to decorate your own living room like I would do.

Speaking of husbands, I'm sure mine's waiting for me to come annoy him with some crazy hairbrained design schemes of my own.  I've been quiet for a while.  Enjoy your weekend!

So back in 2019 we embarked on the bigger than we (and by we, I mean I) realized project of replacing the builder grade flooring throughout the majority of our house.  We added the really nice wood laminate we picked out to the majority of the downstairs and the upstairs hallway and left the bedrooms upstairs carpeted with flooring to be decided on and replaced at a later date.  However, we quickly decided that it would be well worth it to go ahead and continue the flooring from the hallway into our home office.  The picture above is the best before pic I could find.  Normally this room was wall to wall furniture, office supplies, and junk.  It was really hard to believe how much stuff was crammed in there until we took it all out.  Anyways, we already had this nice drum light shade and the one accent wall was painted a dark grey color, which unfortunately, at times, read more purple to me than the intended grey.  As these room makeovers often start for us, what better time to repaint than when the furniture is all moved out?  Also, let's add new baseboards, take off the doors to the closet and add better storage, make a cool accent wall, etc.!  This is why my husband loves me so much. 😆  Sometimes I just get a little carried away.  To start, I created a mood board.  As you can see, it says, "Take 2", which is standard for me because I normally go through a few iterations and even after the iterations, it never ends up exactly as I planned.  

This is the before pic of my step son, Tre's, room.  To be honest, I was quite proud of this space when I took this pic.  Tre had been gone for the weekend at his mom's house so I took the opportunity to go in there and clean it up properly.  You know how kids are about cleaning their rooms.  They tend to clean it just enough for us to give in and be satisfied in the moment, but it's never really clean until we get our hands on it ourselves.  Isn't it cute?  It's his baby/little kid room and even though I'm only a step mom, it hurts my heart a little that we are moving on from it.  Growing up is hard for parents, too.  In actuality I think that the clean room was the catalyst for everything that happened after.  Once it was cleaned, there was space to determine what was and wasn't working still. What definitely wasn't working was the twin size bed.  Tre is 12 and will turn the ripe old age of 13 in April.  I'm not crying, you're crying!  He is super tall for his age (like 5'6" now!) and his twin bed just wasn't cutting it for him anymore. His father therefore decided it was time to clear out this tiny room and make space for the biggest bed that we could fit, a full size.  Neil and Tre spent a day cleaning out the room and it became abundantly apparent that not all of the conventional furniture was going to fit in the room once the full sized bed was put in.  Enter Neil's genius idea, a bed with drawers!  We could now eliminate his dresser, which unfortunately is not pictured, but was situated directly across from his twin bed right beside his desk.  Neil therefore made a trek to Ikea and picked up Tre's brand new teenager bed with drawers.  Now I had been thinking about repainting the room for a while.  It had been this blue shade since Tre was a baby and it just needed to be freshened up.  What better time to paint than when all of the furniture is moved out? This is when the room makeover began to really take shape.

Now for the fun part.  Slat wall!  I had seen this application done online a few times before (thank you especially to @miainteriors on IG for a good part of all that inspo) and always knew that it was something I wanted to try.  Luckily Neil and Tre were on board for it.  We used 2" cedar boards and just cut them to length with our chop saw (they come in 8' lengths and needed to be trimmed to fit above our baseboards on our 8' tall wall) and used a brad nail gun to attach them to the wall.  We don't own a brad nail gun ourselves, but were able to borrow one from my dad.  We also don't have an air compressor, so we rented one from Home Depot for $25 a day.  And let me tell you, there is nothing more fun than using a brad nail gun!  Needless to say, an air compressor and any kind of gun that nails things are now on our tools wish list.

One thing you should know when you are measuring the wall to determine how many slats you will need is that a 2" slat is really a 1-1/2" slat.  We did not know this and did not even bother to check when we started nailing.  We therefore ran out before we got to the end and Neil had to make an extra run to Home Depot to replenish our supply.

Behold, the finished slat wall!

This project goes really fast and is very satisfying.  It's a good ego boost for one's home renovating soul.

Next task was painting the baseboards.  I don't know who decided that the unattractive orange wood color would be a good idea when they designed this house plan, but that's what we got.  Unfortunately, I should have planned a little bit better because when I got to the slat wall, I had to use a small artist's paintbrush to get between all the slats, which was a little intense for my liking.  I obviously should have painted them before the installation.  More lessons learned.  By the way, I also feel that it would have been nice to paint the baseboards the same color as the wall.  I really like this technique, but didn't think it would go over well with everyone and therefore decided that tried and true white would look nice, too.

Check out this hip new lighting.  Boob light be gone!  Can you believe we still had a boob light in our house?  Don't worry, there's a couple more left in another room, so we won't be missing that one too much.  I acquired all of these new light fixtures from Amazon.

Okay, that's it for this round.  Stay tuned for the next part of the makeover where we tackle the window treatment, new bedding, and some new custom built-in furniture.  It's going to be good!  I will also provide a full list of links in my next post of all the accessories we used.

This time last year was both glorious and a bit unsure.  It was February, 2020 back when Covid was still fresh and new and mainly referred to as Coronavirus.  We had yet to see any countries go into lockdown.  Neil and I embarked on our little Valentine's week romantic trip for two to view Modernism Week in Palm Springs, not yet knowing that a month later we would all be in the midst of a global pandemic.  We were still (pretty much) feeling footloose and fancy-free to travel and enjoy life at this time, unafraid of the normal little everyday habits we were used to doing like shaking hands with a random stranger.  We might catch a cold, but we all knew the risk and anyway, no biggie, right?

We had heard about Modernism Week a couple years prior and dreamed about going ever since.  Mid century modernism is our favorite design style and being able to go and witness first hand the iconic homes of the era and maybe even attend a cocktail party in Frank Sinatra's house got us really excited.  If you haven't heard of Modernism Week in Palm Springs, then you should definitely check out the website  www.modernismweek.com  .  Basically, the show, which is hosted annually around the second week in February, typically centers on tours of historic mid century homes, as well as informative lectures, bus tours, and amazing parties.  This year they are offering an online experience with the actual in person experience now moved to April.  Hopefully, they are actually able to still host in April!  

Here are just a few pics from our trip...

This is the Guggenheim House, which was the first house we toured, and frankly could have been the only house we toured because it was so satisfying to my decor-obsessed little heart.

Slim Aarons photography is of course everywhere in PS. Also, how dreamy is this chandelier?

The next house we toured was the historic Albert Frey house, which is positioned solitarily up in the hills above town.  Frey, the architect, was the sole owner and the property is now owned by the Palm Springs Art Museum.

It was very functional in design and sort of resembled the interior of a boat. 
A boat with a giant rock in the side.

This is the iconic Kaufmann Desert House, which is most notably known for being the location of the famous Slim Aarons photo, "Poolside".  Sadly, we only were able to experience it from the top of a double decker tour bus, which was still a delight all on its own.  Many people who we met that attended the event before insisted that we had to take the bus tour and, having heeded their advice, we now can emphatically agree that it was and is a must for first timers to the show.  There is a lot of territory to cover to see all of the mid century homes in Palm Springs and taking the bus was a good way to get a lot of it in.

And do you know whose house this is?  None other than Frank Sinatra himself!  They actually have cocktail parties here during Modernism Week that you can attend.  Unfortunately, you have to be quick on the draw to get tickets because, as you can imagine, it's a pretty popular event.  We weren't lucky enough to score for this party, but again, the bus was our guaranteed way to view the exterior of the property.

This is the Elvis Honeymoon House where he and Priscilla stayed in 1967. 

This is another picture taken from the top of the bus.  So much amazing architecture to gaze at everywhere in PS.

Okay, this is the part where I introduce you to one of the most amazing houses we toured, in my opinion.  You may recognize the house pictured below as it was also "made over" in the Netflix series called "Stay Here", in which host Genevieve Gorder makes over vacation rental homes.  I saw it on the show before I ever knew it was going to be showcased at Modernism Week and was so taken with it on Netflix that I watched it multiple times.  You can imagine my surprise when I found out I would get to tour it in person. This house was almost all totally maintained with its original decor and furnishings from the 70s when it was built.  And it was all in pristine condition, too, even down to the lush hot pink carpet in the bathroom!  Genevieve definitely appreciated the original decor and kept almost all of it just the way it was, but mainly focused the renovations on the kitchen and exterior spaces.  I think it's been sold to new owners now, so unfortunately I don't believe it's available for short term rentals anymore.  Can you just imagine attending a cool vintage cocktail party there, though?

  

This lounge-y vibe is what I seek to emulate in my own home.  Definitely mid century modern boho style in full effect here.

I don't think I really planned on it, but it was pretty cool that the King's Highway Diner at The Ace Hotel was right nextdoor to our hotel.  We swung over for dinner on our last night in PS.  So glad I didn't miss it.

Macrame dreams!

I have about a thousand more pics of this trip that I would love to show you, but you might think it was overboard, so I'll just tell you some of the other things that we got to do.

- Went to the most amazing party/gala we've ever been to on Opening Night of the show called Space Modyssey at the Flight Museum.  There were storm troopers, people on stilts, a David Bowie cover band, and nonstop drinks and food.  Everyone was decked out in their best 1960's vintage looks, too.  It was seriously epic and we'd probably go back to Modernism Week just to attend another party like this again.

- Had a fancy dinner at Eight4Nine for Valentine's Day;

- Spent two evenings in the cocktail lounge at Mr. Lyon's Steak House;

- Hung out in the swanky lounge of the famous Melvyn's Restaurant at the Ingleside Inn;

- Toured many more gorgeous houses that were a part of the show;

- Went to the Modernism Week Design Expo and shopped a ton of vintage home decor.

It won't be this year, but we look forward to many more trips back to Palm Springs, as well as Modernism Week, for years to come.

Maybe we'll see you there next time!