We moved into our apartment over seven years ago when we had one daughter and another one on the way. Seven years later, we have a tween and a 7-year old and have accumulated 11 years worth of stuff. Dance trophies, swim medals, Build-a-Bear bears, toys, dolls, stuffed animals, books, books and more books. And everything — I mean everything in between. And it just kept accumulating. We decided to do our tween bedroom remodel because we knew that that we were staying in our New York City apartment and wanted it to be the best apartment it could be. Our tween bedroom remodel is the first phase of our interior design journey with the living room and home office next, and the master bedroom last.
Since I have no interior design bone in my body, the girls’ room became a mish-mosh of furniture that we have accumulated throughout the years: a Crate and Barrel book case; a modern kids table and stools from Overstock.com; a Raymour and Flanigan bunk bed with trundle; a JC Penney book case and desk set; and a wood armoire from Gothic Gabinets that I bought for $300 back in 1996. Yes. That’s right. From the last century.
We started purging the girls’ room every weekend for about 3 weekends before we “broke ground”. All of these pictures are obviously from “before” the tween bedroom remodel, so it wasn’t always this messy. Sometimes. But as you can see, there was just a lot of stuff everywhere. From what I have learned on HGTV, each piece in your home should have importance. And in our girls’ bedroom, there was no importance to any piece.
There was no connection from one piece to another: the 1996 armoire held everything from arts & crafts to clothes to keepsake mementos to extra blankets for guests. The white Ikea drawer was primarily a set of clothes drawers for our 7 year old but doubled as a night table. They were functional, but not pretty. At all.
The desk was a jumbled mess of books, trophies, medals, pictures and was rarely used as a desk. With our tween in middle school and her homework ramping up, we needed to make sure that she had a clean and clear area for her to think and do her homework.
During the three weekends before breaking ground, we were able to purge over six 30-gallon bags of toys which we donated to a a church in the Dominican Republic and gave it to the children there. The bookcase and desk was also donated to a church in New York for their kids chapel.
I used our Dyson DC59 Cordless Vacuum to clean the room during our many weekends of purging. It cleaned the floors, bunk beds and pieces of furniture without the hassle of a cord, but the power of a Dyson.
I tried to donate the bunk beds to various charities and none would take it, unfortunately. So, the bunk beds were kept within my close circle of friends for their home.
Once the room was cleared out, it looked big, humongous even! Our 15′ ceilings were definitely highlighted and we saw the potential of what we could do. We decided to work with my friend, fellow downtown mommy and interior designer, Kate Stewar, and the contractor of her amazing TriBeCa apartment, Fahey Design, a company owned by downtown parents. Obviously, I like to keep everything within the the downtown NYC family.
With Kate’s keen eye and Fahey’s expertise in execution, we hope to have a cool and sophisticated tween bedroom remodel that will grow with the girls. I have a feeling that their bedroom is going to be the best looking room in our whole apartment.
Next up will be the tween bedroom remodel during the remodeling process.