Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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A Bright And Happy Kids Room

Oh to live in paradise. At least we have readers like Clara (love the name, btw) so we can live vicariously through them. She and her family currently live in the Dominican Republic and she sent us the stunning makeover that she recently accomplished in her daughter Nadia’s room. We’ll let Clara do the rest of the talking. Here’s her letter:

I have been reading your blog for a long time now and thought you might like this makeover. We recently moved to our new home, and while we are tight with our purse we refuse to live in a drab place. Having finished acquiring furniture (we moved here with almost nothing), next we turned our eyes to our daughter’s bedroom, which badly needed some injection of color to cure an acute case of meh!

Reader Clara Before

With a budget of 100 dollars I sure had my work cut of for me, but armed with inspiration from our tropical surroundings along with glue, fabric, and paint I succeeded at giving my daughter an inspired and inspiring space:

Reader Clara After 1

I painted the only full wall in the bedroom blue (it’s a local brand, not available elsewhere). I also painted the doors and closet with white latex paint. It was the most expensive and time-consuming task that I took on (so that says a lot).

Reader Clara After 2

The dresser/bedside table is from Ikea, I painted it and covered two of the drawers and the knobs with fabric. I also made new lampshades for some really inexpensive swing-arm plug-in lamps from eBay.

Reader Clara After 3

Almost everything was made with things I found around the house, which helped me keep the budget so low. Instructions for most of the projects are available in my first blog post about the makeover, and you can see more after photos in the second. – Clara, The Home in Paradise

As if we didn’t need more reasons to wish that we permanently lived on some island getaway. We love the fresh colors and affordable attitude that Clara brought to Nadia’s new room. Now we’re just left wondering when we when can pop over for a visit…

Have a fresh and happy weekend everyone!

Comments

  17. Rachel says

    She did an awesome job on everything! Those dressers are on sale right now for $30. They look so cute here with the fabric but also look great stained.

    Reply

  23. Kyle says

    Ok, now that I’ve gotten the excitement out of my system, I want to say thanks for inspiring :). My husband and I have lived here (in the DR) for over three years now and have been lamenting the lack of availability of so many things that we see J&S (&B&C) using on the blog. Enough lamenting; it’s pro-active DIYer time!

    Reply

  24. Stacey says

    Stunning! Talk about more bang for your buck! I adore the dresser and would love to know how Clara put the fabric on it.

    Reply

  27. Katie says

    I think the ugliest part of that room before were those hideous wood-paneled closets/shelves. The submitter failed to show a picture of this in the final product. I would really like to see how that turned out!

    The rest of the room looks awesome! Great color and love the lamp!

    Reply

  33. JoDi says

    What beautiful transformation! The color is so pretty! Love the extra details and pictures on Clara’s blog too. The paper flower bouquet is my favorite! Oh no, now I have ANOTHER design blog to read every day! LOL

    Reply

  34. Sheryl J says

    I love that wall color! I wish that I would have been so design savvy when I lived in DR. $100? I don’t think I would ever have been able to come up with something like that.

    Reply

  35. Nancy M. says

    Such a gorgeous room. Almost made me consider having another child so I could have a baby girl and give her a room like this! LOL Great job Clara!

    Reply

  36. Bethany Annechino says

    Hey guys. I wanted to let you know the next page/previous page button links aren’t working. I have to manually type in the correct url branch to see anything other than page one. Clicking next takes you to the comments for a random post. Just thought I’d make sure you were aware of the issue.

    -Bethany

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Thanks for the heads up, Bethany. We’re actually not seeing the issue though when we try the Next and Previous buttons at the bottom of each page (or the Next and Previous on an individual post). Is anyone else having the issue? Do you mind sharing what browser you’re using Bethany? Thanks!

      -John

  38. Clara in Paradise says

    Wow! So many lovely comments. Thanks John and Sherry for the feature. The praise means so much more coming from the authors of one of my favorite sites for a long time. You are welcome in Paradise any time.

    And thanks to your lovely readers for the praise. You are far too kind.

    Clara (the old one).

    Reply

  41. Alina says

    It is quite amazing that she did all that with a 100 bucks, espcially since she bought the materials here in my lovely country, where paint, brushes, primers and such are not cheap at all.

    Kudos to her and thanks for the inspiration.

    Reply

  46. Elli Davis says

    Fantastic! It looks like a completely different room! So fresh, just like for a young lady. I really like the colors – even though I am all for using 2, maximum 3 colors, I do not mind more of them here. With such a small budget, this makeover is almost a wonder.

    Reply

  48. Katie says

    Thanks for the link back to her page. Love what she did with those ugly wooden closets. She is great! And I love the bathroom she created for her daughter, too!

    Reply

  49. Alice says

    I’m dying to know where she found the sheets for the twin beds? Are they grey patterned? Or light blue?

    Great makeover!

    Reply

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