Painted paneling + DIY farmhouse bed = sleep

After working on it for months, we finally made some progress on Owen’s new “big boy” room this weekend.

Considering that his little brother will be here in less than three weeks, I’d call that thinking ahead.

We considered letting them share a room, but given Owen’s much-appreciated ability to sleep 12 straight hours overnight — and a newborn’s incapability of sleeping more than, say, three — I wanted to separate them, in hopes of keeping some portion of sanity on our part.

I won’t lie: it also gave me an excuse to decorate a second nursery. (See Owen’s original chocolate-and-sage nursery HERE.)

I’m going with an Americana/vintage farm theme for Owen’s room — you can see my inspiration via Pinterest HERE. Those rope name signs and closet barn doors are happening, people. But, for now, we’ve finished the two biggest projects: painting the room’s original 1950’s wood paneling and constructing a twin bed. And by we, I mean I picked out the paint and the bed plan, and my husband handled the execution. #spoiled

The walls took two coats of primer (we used the water-based High Hide Cover-Stain Zinsser because that’s what all the tutorials — and Bob Vila — recommended for real wood vs. veneer paneling; in retrospect, the husband thinks the oil-based primer would have adhered and covered better), then two coats of paint (Sherwin-Williams Dover White).

We didn’t do any caulking in between the panel grooves, which would have made the room look more polished but would have also done us in, given our deadline and the fact that halfway through this project the ceiling morphed from white to baby-doll pink. It was like #TheDress that broke the Internet, but IN MY HOUSE. (We ended up painting the ceiling the same color as the walls.)

The husband followed plans for Ana White’s DIY farmhouse twin bed, and didn’t make any major modifications, although he did opt to drop in a metal twin bed frame instead of adding slats to hold the mattress so the bed can be disassembled for moving at a later date. He bolted the metal frame to the headboard so this sucker isn’t going anywhere in the meantime. I think we also used our own measurements for where to place the side rails — I wanted them not too high but not too low. It took two coats of primer and two coats of Valspar’s Mountain River.

The buffalo-check duvet cover/pillow sham is from IKEA, and the star sheets are from Pottery Barn Kids. I found the basic bedskirt for a steal from Amazon.

Sweet dreams :).