I never would have thought that design was my thing...EVER...but I was doing a pretty good job with my scrapbook pages and throwing parties. I could manage both of those pretty well. I say that because I think that's how I started. I have always loved colors and textures, but I couldn't pull an actual room together. And then I had my third baby girl. We bought bedding in a bag-no joke, the whole room came in one bag. It was maroon and olive green, which wasn't pink. I started there. A year later, I started working at Pottery Barn Kids. Man, they make it look so easy. But I was starting to see that I could pull things together easily for customers. And then we switched the girls around and our youngest was going to bunk with our oldest. How do you design something that works for a 2 year old and a 7 year old? Then I found the Emmy bedding online while I was on vacation. I knew this was it!
My oldest has always LOVED animals. Monkeys were good enough for her. The PINK...that was for our youngest. Despite my best efforts to keep pink out of the house, she was smitten. So this was the best combination for the two. And with my discount, I was set. But first, we reconfigured everything.
First, we took out the carpet and replaced it with bamboo floors. Next, to add more room for play, we got a loft bed from IKEA. This was 2008, so we had to go to LA to get the bed. We chose the grey because it was the only option at the time...but it actually worked better than white would have. We used a green from the bedding for the walls. As for the duvet here, I actually purchased a queen and resewed it for the size of the bed. This gave me extra fabric for King and Euro size pillows, and it allowed us to change the orientation of the pattern on the duvet. We actually cut it to the size of a throw that we had. A twin duvet and comforter are WAY too big for this bed. We ran into that issue all the time at the store when we would stage bunk beds. So I trimmed everything down to where it would be so much easier to make this bed.
Next, I got the Emmy quilt for our youngest who was moving into a twin bed. We put a tall dresser next to the bed for added storage. I made a smaller throw pillow out of the extra fabric from the duvet on the top bunk.
We added a couple of pieces from PBTeen...a polka dot floor pillow and some locker storage (which you can see in the first pic). We still have that pillow, and we still use those locker bins. Finally, we built a bookcase for books and toys. We painted the bookcase and the dresser (my husbands when he was a kid) the same hot pink.
The view from the top bunk. We had to get rid of the ceiling fan, so we added this vintage fan to cool things off.
When this was all said and done, I realized that maybe I could do something more with design. This room came together so fast that I started to look at other rooms in our house. And over time, I developed more of a style that had a vintage flare. But this room...this is where my confidence in design began.