Living in a house that is almost a hundred years old has its pros and con's but mostly it's awesome! We are always busy trying to tackle the latest projects around the house and are learning so much. Its also a great way to spend time together as a family and teach our children some valuable skills. 

When your on a tight budget like we are some of those projects can take a while and you are only able to just to do a little at a time.  Tackling the boys room has been about a year in the making. The wall paper alone took a couple of weeks to peel all the layers off. 

The first thing we did was have new carpet installed, changed out the light fixture and scrape all the layers of paint and wallpaper off the walls.  Seeing all the different wallpaper thought the ages buried behind each other was kind of fun but a lot of work. Once that was done and we patched up some holes and cracks we got to painting. 

I love the detail of the old craftsman molding around the windows and that the closets have large built in drawers underneath them. This old house has so many neat details and features.

It was important to me to try to find ways to keep that quality craftsman look to the room while having a few fun modern updates. The black, gray and white make a great backdrop for all the fun bright accessories around the room. 

I saved a lot of money by repainting an old bunkbed that was my husbands from when he was a child. I found the chair at a second hand store for $10 and brought it back to life with some fire engine red spray paint. And the desk I found for sale online for $40.00. 

Tip: Putting the desk next to the bed makes it so it doubles as a night stand as well. 

We love changing up the wall each season with a new calendar and new motivational sayings. Its also a cheap and fun way to decorate for all the different holidays through the year. 

Even thought the room is basically in gray scale the room is a lot brighter and friendlier. Its all about the little details and coming up with a fun color scheme and pops of color. 

Tips To Making Your Own Chalkboard Wall:

The less textured your wall is the better. For easy chalk cleanup on your chalkboard wall make sure the surface is pretty smooth and flat before painting it with chalkboard paint. A lot of walls are textured these days and that doesn't make for a great chalkboard wall. The chalk residue gets stuck on the wall with all that texture and bumps a leaves behind white streaks that are difficult to remove. Also don't use chalkboard markers. They suck. Once they dry they are almost impossible to get off. 

This desk was a fun little project. The original desk was a solid dark brown. I wanted to give it a little update but I didn't want to paint the whole thing and loose the wood detail so I left the front of the drawers the original stained wood. I love these old solid wood desks. They are built so well and last forever if you take good care of them. 

One of the bigger and more expensive projects in this whole room are the handmade quilts. Even though I have little-to-none experience with quilt making I know a lot of cool people who do and I had a blast making these for my sons. They turned out better than I could have imagined and really add a beautiful touch to the whole room. Both quilts are the same but are completely different at the same time highlighting each boys unique personality. They also doubled as Christmas presents. I was inspired by this quilt by the Polka Dot Chair.

Even after all these projects this room is still not quite done all the way. We still plan on adding some detail and custom molding to the ceiling and mirror panels to the closet doors. But for now we are really enjoying the space. The boys love having bunk beds and the toddler loves to come visit and be read to by her big brothers. 

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