Caroline's Big Girl Room, Part One

So it's no secret that life as we know it is in complete disarray right now.  But the stress of it all is lowering by the day as my projects and nesting stage are coming to an end.  Today I want to show you all about Caroline's big girl room in progress.

Our house started out with an unattached dining room in which we never dined.  Over the years we turned the room into a playroom.  That was nice having a place to "send" the kids, but let's face it -- I was never disciplined enough to enforce the kids' keeping it straight, and you could see into the room as soon as you entered my front door.  So every time someone came over, I imagined the following dialog in my guests' heads:

"Oh, hi Emily.  I'm glad to be here.  Wow, your kids have some major crap on display here in this room."

Then came our little bundle of surprise and we needed another bedroom in this quaint little house of ours.  Hmm...how about reassigning this random front room once again?

Before:

The room has probably a 10' ceiling with a gorgeous light fixture.  By the way, I took my "before" pictures after all of the toys were cleared out.  I wanted to spare you the shock and awe of the experience.

From the entryway of the room, on the left-hand wall was a little lighted alcove which had (not pictured) glass display shelves.  On the other side of that wall below is a linen closet in my hallway.  These spaces will eventually be combined for a closet. 

Below: another view of the room from the little alcove.

Below: a view of the large window in the room.  This shot was taken after the wall was knocked down.

The room never had doors; rather it had a double wide, cased opening.  The first order of business when constructing a bedroom is to have a real door.  So here are some shots from the outside looking in and the inside looking out:

Next up, sweet C needs a closet.  Lucky girl may have ended up with quite a large closet, too, because we discovered we could go underneath that staircase pictured above.  See for yourself:

During the process, we also laid new carpet throughout the house.  Can you see now why I describe the past week or two as complete disarray?  But I am so glad we did this!  We chose a dark tan frieze (shag) that I absolutely love!

You can also see that the chair rail was removed and the walls were painted Benjamin Moore Wheeling Neutral -- my neutral color throughout my house.  It is a warm, light tan and it goes with almost any color scheme for your decor.

Now, about that dining room light...it was replaced by a ceiling fan which my brother-in-law Jason helped Bobby hang.

Finally the construction phase of the room was finished off by setting up her closet system, which we did on Sunday night. 

My dad had this gorgeous brass / iron bed in storage and a great, barely used mattress set, so he generously gave them to Caroline.  As of writing this post, she has already slept her first night in her new room and did great!  A special thanks to Papa Joe!

Now comes the fun part--decorating.  I'll give you a very small sneak peek of the bedding we chose, but I am far from ready to do a room reveal yet.

I found this sweet, Shabby Chic quilt at Target and I am pulling several different pieces together to mix and match the look.  Hopefully we will feel "finished" with her room soon and I'll do a total reveal.  But for now the room is livable which means the nursery is free to be readied for its third resident!  I just can't believe how much our family has evolved over the years.  But I am blessed beyond words and I wouldn't change a thing.