Ryley’s Room Makeover

We’ve lived in our house for five years, and Ryley’s room has always, always, always been an issue and point of contention. It’s constantly messy, and no matter how many “Come to Jesus” talks we have about how “everything has a place” and “please put things back when you’re done playing,” Ryley has struggled with keeping her room in any other state besides a pigpen.

In fact, she had this horrible “theory” that having a messy room is actually helpful, because if all your stuff is out on the floor, you can find it more easily.

She comes by it honestly. I mean, when I was little, my room was always a mess, too, and my parents finally gave up and started shutting my door when they walked past it. Yep. ;-) Sorry, Daddy.

But Ryley’s room is so small, and over the past few months, I have been brainstorming ways we could make it seem bigger. We also have had trouble with her big, bulky closet doors staying on the tracks, so when I came across some interesting ideas on Pinterest, I showed Ryley my idea, enlisted the help of my aunt Coleen, and started making plans.

First, Ryan removed the closet doors for us.

Then, Ryley and I had to clean the room. Because we could not walk in it:

I’m not even sure how I managed to get back into this corner to take this picture. I did end up needing a band-aid on my foot though, at some point during the process.

 

After it was clean, we rearranged the furniture yet again, moving the dresser into the closet, to maximize square footage in her room.

But we weren’t done yet! We left the room alone for a few weeks while we formulated the rest of our plan and did multiple online searches for 84” tension rods and 96” curtains….Finding nothing, we decided we would have to make our own curtains, from sheets.

So this morning, my aunt Coleen and uncle Paul arrived at our house with her sewing machine, scraps, and supplies. We took a little field trip to the fabric store, and soon the girls were up and running on the project:

They worked and they worked and they worked:

Notice Ryley’s new glasses? She got them this morning and is so excited! We think they’re pretty cute on her.

Coleen let Ryley do a good portion of the sewing herself!

Then, after hours and hours of work (during which Mommy and Daddy went to see The Avengers), the closet curtains were finally hung:

 

And then the window curtains too….

We also added some other organizational finishing touches to the room:

 

Voila!

We are so excited with how this turned out!!!!! Thank you, Coleen, for all of your help! You are so amazingly creative, talented, and patient. It turned out better than I had even dared to hope.

I might just have to post my own picture on Pinterest now!

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And one more bonus pic of Ryley reading….this time with glasses. :-)