Sebastian’s & Humphrey’s Bedroom Reveal

Yeah it is my first full reveal, it has taken so long to get here but so many of the jobs such as roofing, fixing joists, pointing do not really lend themselves to blog posts of pretty pictures. Many of the rooms are almost there but I feel that this is the one that is ready to share. As a disclaimer there are actually a few additions yet to come namely another mattress for Humphrey but he will be in with us for some time yet so we decided to leave the extra floor space for now.

Designing a room for children is actually the most fun ever, all of those funny little quirks that you may be afraid of in the rest of your home you can instigate with ease for your kiddos, in fact I wrote a whole post with tips and tricks for pulling a great room design together for children, here is the link.

We knew we wanted Sebastian to share a room with his sibling, the new addition turned out to be a boy but if he had have been a girl it would not have altered our decision. With that in mind we were given a different scope of putting together two very different rooms, a playroom and a bedroom space.

Firstly let us get the ugly before pictures out of the way. The house faces north south so lots of beautiful light on one side and not so much on the other.  Keeping it bright and free of scary monsters, (vital in a kids bedroom), meant keeping it colourful.

I based the design around two main elements the balloons, (that we started collecting before I was pregnant with Sebastian), and the cloud wallpaper. I had the idea of cloud wallpaper stuck in my head for some reason and spent the best part of a year and a half searching for the right cloud wallpaper. On a number of occasions Joe suggested that perhaps I should move away from the idea of clouds if it was proving a problem. I have one word to describe my husband quitter! Eventually I found the perfect paper on Spoonflower. I had seen Spoonflower on many American bloggers sites but always considered the shipping costs to be too great to justify. Since first hearing of the company they now have a base in Europe also so everything was falling into place. Spoonflower is a great resource for independent designers to showcase their ideas and you get to have them printed up as fabric or wallpaper.

I had never used pre pasted paper before so I was nervous but it went on like a dream and I did the whole wall with no mistakes and pregnant – oh yes renovations stop for nothing here.

 

Sebastian is a collector and I wanted him to have somewhere to display his treasure! This house was a dark wood that was given to us and painting it was a labour of love but I am glad I did.

The next hurdle was finding a yellow to match the clouds, cue more endless hours of searching. I eventually found a match in Valspar. Now this is a brand I had seen in the US for sometime but it is new-ish to the UK. I hate to get negative but I was not impressed with the paint quality. I can only assume that we have a different mix here as the US bloggers that swear by it I respect. The dark colour took 6 coats, yes 6! Up and down the ladder pregnant. When I painted the lounge a dark blue from Little Greene Paint Company it took 2 coats. The light colour from Valspar took two coats but the paint drags. Okay the negativity is over now but I felt that I have to keep it honest folks .

The gallery wall is a triumph I love how it contains so many memories and some very personal artwork including the handmade pennants and a beautiful bear drawing from artist and good friend Julia Ogden. Below are two futon cushions that fold out into single beds, perfect for sleepovers. I covered them in a furry throw. It is also a great place to snuggle up with a book.

The Ivar hack is shared fully HERE. Inside I have all of the more chilled out toys and baby toys in here. In fact after getting into pjs playing a board game from the cupboard has become part of our routine. It really helps Sebastian to calm before bedtime stories.

We had a huge old frame that we had never found a use for so we cleaned it up and painted it. I added net curtain wire and Sebastian gets to fill it with whatever he likes. Part of me wanted to change it for the photo and get all interior stylist on it but I decided to keep it real and leave it just how he made it. In front I created another little book area, the hack for that chair is HERE. Ontop is a bear rug that we bought in Paris it is actually a super cute outfit he can wear.

The curtains are the simplest thing ever to make simply hem the fabric all the way around and use curtain hooks that have clips.

The drawers I bought second hand from a friend on Facebook and I painted the bottom two grey to add a little interest. The You Are My Sunshine hanging is homemade and the post is HERE.

The drawers also give Sebastian another surface to work on his vingettes! I love his homemade bits including the abstract scuptures he made after viviting the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield.

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

You would not believe how self congratulatory I am about that rubbish elephant joke. I am in fact talking about the lack of a bed. Sebastian co slept and still does most of the time, he can open a baby gate carrying 4 soft toys and wanders in. We looked at lots of toddler rail beds but we settled on having a mattress on the floor so any roll outs caused no harm. I did have a plan to build a frame around it to look like a house but after getting everything in I feel it would be too much, there is a lot happening already.

Okay so the fireplace is green. Well first of all I don’t care, I like it. It was originally painted a yellowy cream and I was not about to pay to get it dipped for a room that would change at some point. I had some paint left from the utility and I painted it green which suited the room better. I am not a purist when it comes to painting/not painting things but I know for some it is sacrilege. Colourful fireplaces are not as uncommon as you may think, Karen Clough from Well This Is Growing Up wrote about it here, and she included this fireplace in her round up.

The book caddy here is actually from the kitchen section of Ikea. The lightshade was such a nightmare I could not decide what worked with the size of the room and the fact that we had the balloons suspended also. Then I was walking past one of my favourite shops in Hebden Bridge and say this in the window and bought it right away, the link is at the end of the post.

 

I enjoyed designing and executing this room so much. Adding all of the little details that make it unique. Sebastian loves it despite not spending a whole night in there and I am sure he and his brother will have many happy times talking and playing instead of sleeping in that room. All in all I am feeling pretty smug about this room.

I have added links at the bottom for you to be able to find some of the things in the room.