Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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A Kids Bedroom With Map Wallpaper & Bunk Beds

…in his bedroom. Well, most of it. Here’s Emma’s hilarious letter about the makeover they turned out for their son’s room:

We moved in to this three-storey 1876 “brownstone” (sidebar: it is neither made of brownstone nor located in New York City) three years ago – we’re in Ontario, Canada. We’ve been working our way through the house converting what was four separate apartments back into a single home. This bedroom is up on the third floor and it belongs to our 5-yr old son, Angus. The ‘Before’ photos were taken when we first looked at the house and, at the time, this bedroom was the living room of a medical student at the University nearby.

Emma Before Main

When we finally got our hands on it and finished some necessities in the rest of the house – like a working kitchen and toilet – we decided that (a) the room needed closets and (b) it should be out-of-the-park awesome so that he’ll never leave home and will look after us when we are old and can’t find our false teeth (sidebar #2: we will re-visit this plan when he is 16 and takes up the drums, or when he is married and his spouse doesn’t want to sleep on a bunk). Enter the built-in bunk bed loft, which my husband made while I helpfully pointed out where things didn’t line up.

Emma After Main

We were going for a campy/beach club look and he added in the cedar shake roof to make it feel like a real playhouse… or maybe a crab shack…

Emma Top Bunk

I was dying to try this map wallpaper after seeing it online. In fact, I think I impulse-ordered it well before we had even moved in to the house. We had heard a few times that wallpapering is a real relationship tester, so we armed ourselves with a bucket of paste and few glasses of wine late one night once the kiddos were asleep. The wall wasn’t quite big enough for the whole earth, so the most nerve-wracking part was deciding which parts of the world to leave out (sidebar #3: our son is going to be floored when he discovers the existence of amazing places like ‘New Zealand’, ‘Fiji’ and ‘Alaska’).

Emma Map Wall

This room was so much fun to do.  Hope you guys like it! -Emma J.

Emma Window

Angus is a lucky guy, right? I think Emma has as good a shot as any of us at keeping her kid around forever. You can see more pics and learn more about the makeover right here on her blog. Thanks Emma!

Comments

  4. Lesley says

    Love the bedding in particular. Thrilled this is a local redesign, there is hope that I may be able to source it here…. off to her blog.

    Reply

  6. Ellen says

    Pretty amazing room! Great work!

    Given everything I’ve been hearing about the current young adult trend, I think it is a lot harder to get an adult child OUT than to keep them IN. So no worries, if that’s what you’re going for. :)

    Reply

  12. kathryn says

    this is A) one of my favorite redesigns ever (I love the theme/vibe and the fact that it doesn’t go way over the top) and B) easily the funniest one ever. I can’t wait for her blog post when her son finds out about Alaska!

    Reply

  16. Bethany says

    LOVE this room. They did such an amazing job! I’m obsessed with that wallpaper! I’m mostly anti-wallpaper but I think I’d make an exception in this case. Now I just need to buy a house so I have somewhere to put it.

    Reply

  26. heather says

    While the room is awesome, Emma’s side bars made me laugh and have now made me want to read more of her blog for her writing style alone. That’s pretty much the only reason I read the few blogs I do, because the writing style makes me laugh (in a good way, not a laughing at you way). Emma has just gained a new reader.

    Reply

  27. Julie Kleine says

    This is a great room! I can’t wait to show my husband and ask him to recreate it. The man can build anything. I also love their sense of humor.

    Reply

  29. Jamie P-M says

    I am so in love with the map wallpaper! I’m 33 and I’d totally live in that room. My hubs can have the bottom bunk.

    Reply

  34. Lulu says

    Look at all this hard work you are doing while on vacation! Reposting a room tour that someone emailed to you! A giveaway post! That got a whopping 86 comments! Some photos of you on the beach! A house tour, a recap of all the not much you have done, maybe tomorrow can be a monthly roundup. Or a walk through the new ikea catalogue! Maybe a photo of a sandcastle Clara made? Available in hi-res for download so we can stick it in a white frame next to her watercolour art? I’m done with this blog, and from the number of non Sherry comments on recents posts it looks like I’m not the only one.

    Reply

    • Linda says

      I am not sure why you are so bitter, Lulu. They are on vacation. I doubt you work at full speed 52 weeks a year. Everyone deserves a break and no one is forcing you to read their blog.

    • Em says

      If you don’t like it, don’t read it, and don’t bother to comment on it. Take your nastiness somewhere else.

    • Linda says

      A different Linda, but Lulu, did you notice the giveaway has something like 12,000 entries already? And, I suspect a lot of the regular readers are refraining from posting comments since we know that Sherry and John are reading each and every comment ON THEIR VACATION. Hey, I agree that some blogs are less than professional in maintaining their posting schedule – but that can’t be said about YHL.

    • Allison says

      Lulu, head back over to the hate forums where you belong. This comment is ridiculous in every sense. They’re on VACATION. I’m not sure if you fully realize that a vacation is meant for but I would look into that if I were you.

      Bottom line is..if you don’t like the blog, don’t read it. No one is forcing you. Instead of wasting your energy posting mean comments why don’t you head over to a blog you enjoy and post there?

      John and Sherry are better people than I. If it were my vacation I wouldn’t give “work” a thought at all. I don’t think not having a single post for a week would be uncalled for.

      Enjoy your time off guys..everyone deserves a summer family vacation. <3

    • VV says

      Oh phew – thank goodness! Yes please, stop reading (and commenting) on YHL :) NO ONE WILL MISS YOU HERE.

      Good riddance~!

    • Kate @ This Wandering Life says

      Enjoy your vacay J & S and post whatever you want on your time off! We love you and know you of all people deserve a break! Thanks for feeding our crackersik addiction even while you’re away… and enjoy those cute Bowers in Destin! Sheesh, this is your space not anyone else’s. I agree with the other replies to Lulu… you don’t have to read it if you don’t like it people! (Sidebar: I like it!) :-)

  38. WendyMI says

    LOVE this room!!! And Emma’s sidebars are hysterical. Shoot.. what wife wouldn’t want to sleep on a bunk? Pshaw!

    New blog to read…yay!

    Reply

  39. Joelle says

    Emma is pretty hilarious! and a great decorator to boot. Made me laugh on an otherwise rough morning of wrangling twin 2-year-olds. I see that closet and just want to lock myself in it for awhile.

    Reply

  42. Linda Bernstein says

    Emma, THANK YOU for making me laugh my butt off this morning with your commentary. I’m just waiting for your son to stomp down the stairs in a few years with a hurt look on his face.
    “Why…why…why didn’t you tell me? WHY AM I JUST NOW FINDING OUT ABOUT ALASKA?!”

    Reply

    • Carole says

      I’m an Alaskan who sometimes does feel slighted by our misrepresentation on many maps but this thought did make me chuckle :)

  44. rachael says

    Love it! Go Ontario!
    I clicked over to her blog but the font is INSANELY ridiculous to read, any one else have that problem? Is it just my eyes or my computer screen?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Anyone else having an issue with the font? Perhaps it loads as a “default” on some computers which makes it harder/easier to see for some folks?

      xo
      s

    • Katie says

      I’m with you, Rachael, on the font being hard to read… seems like others have mentioned it in Emma’s comments too. Hoping maybe they can change that.

    • Carrie M. says

      I can’t read it either. Tried to highlight to see if that’d make it easier, but it made it worse. So I just looked at the pictures on several posts to try and get the gist of what they were showing, but ended up closing the pages since I couldn’t read any of it. Too bad, really, because her writing style was awesome! :-/

    • Katie says

      P.S. It doesn’t seem as bad when I go directly to their blog instead of through the link above. Not sure why, but just a tip!

    • Emma says

      Thanks for the font feedback, folks!! Looks like what we had wasn’t playing nice with certain browsers. We just updated it – hopefully a little easier on the eyes now!

    • Emma says

      Thanks for the font feedback, folks!! Looks like what we had wasn’t playing nice with certain browsers. We just updated it – hopefully a little easier on the eyes now!

    • The Happy Space says

      Thanks for the font feedback, folks!! Looks like what we had wasn’t playing nice with certain browsers. We just updated it – hopefully a little easier on the eyes now!

  46. Catherine says

    Holy beach shack, Batman! That is FANTASTIC and I want to move in myself. Like right now. Seriously though, that is a gorgeous room and they did a spectacular job on it. My son would flip for a room like that (except some airplanes would need to be added).

    Reply

  50. Jeanna says

    This is amazing! You have had some wonderful reader re-designs before, but I think this just might be one of my favorites!

    Reply

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