Tween Girl Bedroom Makeover Reveal

I thought I'd have the before and after pictures of Ellie's bedroom posted yesterday but I am dying of a disgusting head cold and it's slowing me down. It's almost all I can do to lay in bed watching old episodes of "Gilmore Girls" while eating chocolate chips. Which is sad because I can't even taste them that well. What a waste!

Anywho, better late than never!

Here is her room before. And there are a few more pictures plus my original plans here.

And here it is now.

 After sewing the blackout curtains, one of the biggest changes are the white walls which shall henceforth be referred to as "The White Walls From Hell." When we painted the wood paneling in the kitchen we got a lot of bleed through so we knew that this time we needed to prime before we painted. First I hit all of the knots in the knotty pine with a layer of oil based primer, then Marc sprayed the whole room with two coats of Kilz. Things were looking good so he went ahead and sprayed the walls with a coat of Benjamin Moore latex interior white paint. The next morning we found this.

  Disgusting brown bleed through in several places. I may have had a major hissy fit/crazy break at that point, I mean, we'd spent an entire Saturday prepping and painting and the room looked awful. So on Monday I marched myself down to Sherwin Williams and demanded a product that would "FIX THIS MESS!" Poor Sherwin Williams paint guys. I was not in a good mood. I was directed to the white pigmented shellac which I now fondly think of as the Holy Grail of primers. It smelled a little, but it covered everything! Unfortunately Marc had to work so I ended up rolling it on myself and then brushing over it to get out the bubbles that kept happening. Because it's a shellac it dried with a bit of shine and I decided to stop there and be happy because I was sick to death of painting! 

The paint pros said that a lot of things can cause bleed through on old wood paneling, tannins in the wood, old tobacco smoke, or even residue from furniture polish that people used to put on them. In short, next time (yes I have two rooms left with unpainted wood paneling) I'll start with the shellac primer. It's expensive, but so worth it!

 Hooray for smooth white walls! Everything after that was pretty easy and went according to plan. Ellie loves comics so we framed some in these clip frames from Hobby Lobby.

Batgirl is a favorite. She's also loves Batman, so he went on the door here.

I'm curious how other moms decorate with their tweens and teens? I really wanted Ellie to feel like the room was hers, but she is only 12 and doesn't totally understand design. I kept having her look at teen rooms on Pinterest with me and trying to get her to identify what she liked about the rooms she was drawn to so we could replicate them. We'd have conversations like this:

Me: So you like this room? Awesome! What do you like about it? The color? The lamp? The area rug?

Ellie: I like the giant 6 foot canopy bed.

Me: Right. But remember your room is tiny. So we need to find things you like that we can do in your room.

Ellie: I like the two huge chairs shaped like space pods in front of the giant fireplace?

Me: arrrrrghpftttt.

I finally decided to ask her to help pick specific items for her room, but I'd decide how it was all going to go together. So I found her dresser on Craigslist, and she picked the paint color for it. More on that makeover here.

 There wasn't room for a nightstand, but I wanted her to be able to read in bed and she picked out this little spotlight lamp for her wall from Target.

Her stuffed animals that she couldn't part with got corralled on shelves.

You can read a cute story about that little pink piggy bank here.

She wanted to hang this plaque she got from her Young Women's church leaders when she turned twelve.

 It's interesting because she loves the way everything came out, but her perception of things is that I designed her room. And my perception of things is that I love how it came out, but I definitely didn't design it how I would have for me. I think all that wood paneling would make for a perfect cottage bedroom, but when I showed Ellie pictures like this

 She said no way.

So we ended up with this, and we are both very happy! What do you think about decorating your child's room? How much input do they get? Would you let them have something you hate? I hope you'll leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Linking up!

The Turquoise Home The Seasoned Homemaker Just a Girl and Her Blog Live Laugh Rowe Redoux Interiors