The steps below follow the order of the work for this kids rooms project.
It is that time of year again! Happy Birthday to me… (literally today is my birthday, YAY!) but that is beside the point because today is the first day of Sherwin-Williams’ NATIONAL PAINTING WEEK!!! Be sure to visit SWPaintingWeek.com AND there are two other lovely projects today. So look at Design Crush’s Bathroom project and City Sage’s Side table project!
Anyway, we have been killing ourselves for the past month to finish a huge project, in very little time for your benefit of course!! (well, you and my kids!!!)
This year’s project has been a while in the making, almost 2 full years (apparently, it is true, good things come to those who wait!). When we first moved in, my daughter’s current bedroom didn’t actually exist, it was a big open family type room (the 4th living room in this house), so we built it in and created a bedroom. So this whole project has been taking quite a while. I’ve been showing you little bits of my plans for Etta’s room, and my main goal was that I knew I really wanted to do something cool with the bed nook that we created when we built in the room. So today, we are so excited to show you our bunk bed playhouse, I feel like we need a trumpet playing! It is that exciting!
It was a lot of fun to build and our girls LOVE it too (technically if I was allowed to make believe and run around like a kid all day long, I don’t think you could get me out of it!)
Since this is Sherwin-Williams National Painting Week, I need to be sure and point out the house’s color, I just really love this blue paint! It is Sherwin-Williams, Dignity Blue (SW 6804), with the trim Westhighland White(SW 7566). (since someone might ask, the walls are: Impatiens Pink (SW 6582).
The before picture (once we had built in the wall and doorway on the left), because before pictures are good for my remodeling soul, especially when you are tired after a big project! So good to see just how far you’ve come!
Let’s get this party started! Woot! Woot!
As always, we start off with an option in mind of what we want to accomplish. I wanted a nook playhouse and bunk bed. I had been scouring for inspiration images, and found this one, and it was by far my go-to bunk house that I had seen. So once we had an option of where we wanted to go, we got started customizing it for our space.
image source
We start sketching, changing and making it work. Justin and I are a great team in that way, as long as we can sketch while we talk, we usually work very well together (as opposed to no paper and pens, which makes for an uncomfortable discussion… we are both too creative minded, we picture things differently and get frustrated)!
After we have a sketch in mind, Justin will often use a 3d modeling program to work out kinks, and really be able to see what is going on at different angles. But, whether or not you know how to model something in 3d, never underestimate a few hand sketches and colored pencils. We even made black and white copies of the house sketch and let our girls color them while we did too. Once we had this down on paper I knew it was exactly the direction we needed to go.
The cost will vary depending on where you start. We purchased a Mydal bunk bed from Ikea to get started and save time. The supplies for the actual house building is from $250 – $300 prices may vary depending on where you buy your supplies and if you do the exact same thing, or change it up. This cost does not include the bunk bed.
Break Down the Sections:
Since we are living in a rented space, we designed this bunk bed playhouse to be removable for when we find our next house. I am not going to lie, this made the plans a LOT more intense than your average project. But I like that the removable approach this will work for whatever reason may come up, moving or when the child grows out of it, whatever the reason. So there are four sections, Besides the extra building time it made installation a BREEZE! Bonus, someday when you are done using it, you could give it away or sell it and it will still be usable for the next family!
By the way, the door section is optional, but if you have the space it is a fun addition!!
First we started by making a couple modifications to the Ikea bunk. Namely, we moved the ladder from the long side of the bunk to the end. We did however return the safety rails to make sure that we weren’t doing anything that would put our girls at risk.
We didn’t attach a new ladder to the bed. We are going to make a new ladder that will be separate, and will make climbing into the upper bunk easier for the littles. We’ll have plans for that in little while!
This was a clearly intense project. I am not gonna lie. HOWEVER I think that anyone with moderate to first-time skills can do it, but it will take you some time. My very experienced in the building arts, husband still had a 3 week (almost full time) project to get it done, so if you are on a time line, make sure you plan accordingly. We will have an in depth walkthrough coming, it just might be a few posts long! But because I don’t want you to feel like you can’t do it, just watch this video of how quickly it came together and hopefully that will get you excited to try it!
Below I will show you a few highlights while the building took place.
Our lovely Dignity Blue (SW 6804) Sherwin-Williams paint going on! This really is one of the fun parts when the color is there and you can begin to imagine what it will really look like!
The girls are fans! So that makes me happy!
With the trim in place it is really getting exciting!
The roof section is by far the most complicated building portion, because we wanted a pitched roof.
I love the little gabled windows! They add so much to the overall look of the little house!
We painted all the trim before installing the wood shingles. The color is Westhighland White (SW 7566) by Sherwin-Williams!
Roof in place!!!
Getting the door section in place! I wanted to point out, if cedar shake shingles are too expensive, you could use the same siding we used below and either paint it a coordinating roof color or faux paint shingles, but I liked the texture the siding as rather than flat plywood. We always try to use the scraps we had left from project to make sure we didn’t need to buy extra supplies.
Um DONE…FINALLY! That was A LOT of work! But look how happy she is!
And don’t forget the other fun Sherwin-Williams painted projects from her room.
First the Painted Rug. I couldn’t find the exact rug that I wanted in my modest-cost. So I added the paint color from her room onto a rug that I found and I love how it turned.
Painted Confetti Drapes One of my go-to projects ever!
And last but not least my old furniture into a built-in closet method! It is memorable what a little elbow grease and paint can do!
Before:
After:
In case you are wondering, these are the colors that we were working with in the room.
I used Satin paint from Sherwin-Williams in their Emerald line of paints!
Sherwin Williams – Impatiens Pink (SW 6582) walls
with accents of Cheery (SW 6584) and Heart Felt (SW 6586) painted rug, and painted confetti drapes
For the house blue I chose Dignity Blue (SW 6804)
Deep Sea Dive (SW 6718 ) and a mix of Deep Sea Dive at 25% (additional confetti drape colors)
and the White is Westhighland White (SW 7566).
Oh and because I can’t help it, one last look!
Again, now that you made it through this incredibly long post just a reminder that there are two other lovely projects today. Be sure to go look at Design Crush’s Bathroom project and City Sage’s Side table project!
Tomorrow three more great projects! look at Vintage Revivals, Four Generations One Roof and Simply Grove.
Thanks to Sherwin-Williams for sponsoring this project and for putting together such a great group of bloggers for National Painting Week, I am so honored to be a part of it again!
