Not too long ago I decorated Sofia’s room and was very happy with the soft, pretty appearance I created for her. However, it was by no means gender neutral and with the advent of Anna, the need for Charlie and Sofia to share a room arose.
Steve and I shared our bedroom with little Anna for the first eight or nine months of her life in a desperate attempt to avoid putting Charlie and Sofia in the same room (Charlie is an excellent sleeper, Sofia, not so much). Around Christmas time my sister gave me a talking to and told me that I needed to be excited about them moving in together because if I wasn’t, they wouldn’t be. How did I get myself excited? By re-decorating of course!
The budget for this room was pretty much nil so I relied on my sewing machine, paint, and some DIY art to bring the room to life. My mother’s day wish was that I would have time to stage and photograph Sofia and Charlie’s new shared room. Wish granted. Thank you husband!
First, a before of Sofia’s girly decor:
For the new decor I departed from the fairly neutral overall scheme of our house and went wild with aqua and pops of red.
FYI, Walmart has the cutest and least expensive lamps, like this red one here.
I sweet talked Steve into replacing the seldom used closet with a loft space. Now looking at the picture I’m thinking it is a bit too red. I might paint the ladder and front of the loft cloud white to lighten it up.
I gave these inexpensive Ikea curtains some pizazz with a red and white zig zag trim to match the homemade window cornice.
A collection of mismatched Value Village pictures frames are unified with red paint and filled with DIY art. And wow, really could have hung those pictures straighter. Quilt by Grandma LaRoy.
It is a tight squeeze but we make it work. I’ll keep Charlie in a crib until he’s ten if it means he won’t wake us up at night.
This is how Charlie gets into his crib.
My favorite part of this room is the gallery wall. Not because I think my drawings are so fantastic or because the frames only cost $20 total, but because the pictures tell a story. You see one night Sofia asked me to “tell them a story with my mouth” and so I made up a tale about an orphan brother and sister, Barley and Bofia, who went into a cave and found a secret underground land of talking dinosaurs where they met a family of triceratops who adopted them. It was a hit and they have been asking for Barley and Bofia stories every night for two months since. If I knew that it was going to turn into such an epic series I probably would have chosen better names! I love coming into the room and catching the kids just standing there, staring at the pictures which feature different characters from the stories.
I think the kids probably like the addition of the loft best (what kid wouldn’t?). We have dubbed the lower section Charlie’s “man cave” and the loft portion, Sofia’s “lady loft”. They’ve ended up sharing both spaces and overall the transition from separate rooms to a shared room has been a good one. They are constantly fighting but they are also the best of friends and I am thankful that their sharing a space has contributed to this.
I used to do more DIY posts with instructions but there are so many good ones out there already so I’ve included some links to tutorials for how to do some of the projects I took on for this room: the closet loft, curtain trim, fabric window cornice, fitted sheet (in loft).
Hope you enjoyed the pictures! Next up is giving Charlie’s old room some girly flair to suit my Anna baby!
Notice how there is no hitting or screaming in any of the pictures? Win. Win. Win. Mess be damned.
