Cozy Bedroom Makeover on a Budget

Hey everybody, it's Melissa from Welcome to the Woods. For the last month I've been hard at work on an amazing bedroom remodel and as a video creator I usually take my footage on two devices. One is my DSLR camera in a horizontal orientation for YouTube and then the other is my iPhone in a vertical orientation for TikTok and Instagram. Well, I went to remove my SD memory card that has all the footage out of my camera to bring it home and transfer the files onto my computer for editing. I put it in my pocket and then I didn't take it out when I got home before I left to go hiking in the woods with my kids. Spent the day having a great old time frolicking the woods and when I got home the SD card was no longer in my pocket. So after a lot of panic and time spent wandering the woods looking for it, I came to the realization that I no longer have access to those files and that is why you get this video today. I'm going to do this one a little different than normal. I am going to be here talking to you, showing you the vertical video format like so next to me, that is going to show off everything I did to transform this bedroom on a budget. This bedroom was boring and blue and so outdated. The carpet smelled terrible, everything had like an inch of dust on it. I don't think anybody's used this room in 20 years. So I removed the carpet and the tack strips that came with that and then also the baseboards. This is going to make it easier for me to paint. The other demolition I did was scraping the ceiling texture. It was heavily popcorn and then also the closets actually. Like there was so much texture on the walls in the closet. I don't know. I sprayed that down with warm water and then scraped it off with an eight inch metal drywall knife. I did test negative for asbestos beforehand. I removed the louvered closet doors but I'm also going to be repurposing these and then I cleaned up just the mess. I mean there was like so much mess from all that demolition. So with the demolition done, we're gonna start with a fresh slate of white paint. Multiple coats on the ceiling, the closets, all the walls, until everything was just a beautiful warm white. The title of this video is Bedroom Makeover on a Budget. One of the ways I save money in this room is using leftover paint materials. You can sometimes get some at your local household hazard waste facility but I had enough leftover white paint from my various remodels. That is what I put in this room. Right away in the beginning too I switched out the ceiling fan that was so dusty and gross with a fandelier. If you've never seen one of these, a fandelier is a really cool chandelier that has blades that can move air around either inside like this one or sometimes they pop out the top. This one from Parrot Uncle is linked in my description. It's really fancy and pretty and it was the right scale for this room. Now let's move on to flooring. I use leftover flooring which also saved me a ton of money. This is a laminate so it's cost effective in the first place but this was mostly leftover from the rest of the house where I laid this. Initially I was planning to do carpet in this room because I love carpet in bedrooms but I just decided like I better use the materials I already have on hand and I only had to buy one extra box to finish out the whole space. It's nice and quiet like carpet because of an underlayment and this is just a really warm beautiful floor I can work off of. The inspiration for the whole design of this bedroom actually came from the sheets. So Brooklyn is the sponsor of this video and Brooklyn and sheets are my jam. I absolutely love them. So I picked out a sheet set in warm gray which is my favorite color from their site. When you're budgeting for a bedroom remodel, bedding is an area you don't want to skimp. High quality sheets can transform your sleep. Being cooler so that you don't wake up all sweaty, soft and luxurious so you look forward to going to bed, and getting better sleep can transform your life. So Brooklyn and bedding is what I would recommend. It's what I use and I love sleeping in it. Their high thread count sheets are heirloom quality. They're going to last you for a very long time and they're worth investing in. They get softer with every single wash so they just get better and better with time. I have a discount code for you that you can access here and in the description on this YouTube video. You can save up to 25% when you bundle your sheets on brooklynand.com and then you can use my discount code on top of that. So it's the best time to shop right now. They have so many color options. I told you my favorite is warm gray but they have 20 plus colors and styles to match with whatever bedroom design. Now because these sheets are a nice neutral, I wanted to play off of that with other design choices in the room and really make the second hand furniture the star of the show. I started sourcing antique furniture that could work in the space and I came across this secretary desk that I think was made super super long ago. I got it for only $50 and the guy who sold it to me told me that when his mom acquired it in the 50s, she bought it from someone who said it was very very old. I couldn't find any stamp on it that indicated the age but I asked my Instagram audience and a lot of them think it was built around the turn of the century which is so cool. It's over 100 years old if that's true. So I definitely needed to fix this up a bit. I came through and took pieces of it apart, refinished it in like a Kona colored stain and poly in one. This actually matched the original finish really well so I only sanded down and restained the areas that had a lot of damage and really needed like a fresh look. The other pieces I picked up for this room include these end tables which were once a desk. The person who sold them to me had like cut the desk up to make two end tables and slapped a coat of paint on it and that's great and all but his paint job really missed the mark. It did not look very good and these were dented up so I went and filled holes with bondo. I sanded it all really smooth. I actually stripped the top of these to then stain it to match the antique secretary and I just kind of refinished them to a style that was going to really make them pop and look beautiful in the room. I also accented the detailed router work on these end tables to really bring them to life just with like a paint marker and I think that they look really really cool. I got the pair of end tables for a total of $70. I took on the tedious task of repurposing all of the baseboard trim. I had to sand it down and restain it because it had so many dents and paint drips all over it but this saved me loads of money because trim work is one of the most expensive things in a remodel. So far we have really unique furniture, we have a beautiful light fixture, we have nice warm flooring, but we have kind of boring white walls. So one other accent that I wanted to build out in this bedroom makeover was a slat wall design. To save money, I went to the store and actually just bought select pine and ripped it down on my table saw. I already have the table saw so why not use that instead of buying more expensive like trim work or already pre-cut pieces. I bought 10 foot long and 8 foot long 1x4s. These I ripped down to into thirds so each one is like a little bit wider than an inch and I went to stain them and refinish them. I sanded them all down, I did a preconditioner on them so that the stain would absorb evenly in that soft pine wood. Then I came in and stained them with American walnut. This color is so cool. I feel like it just transforms pine into a walnut look-alike, especially select pine because there's no knots in it. This is really fitting since the house is 1957 so it's a mid-century home and now this color matches the trim work as well. I made a mistake here while I was staining these that I was squishing them all together and trying to stain one side at a time. Well this really made the stain drip in between each of the slats and I should have stained them individually three sides at a time. I won't make that mistake again and hopefully watching this you can learn from my troubles. I had to sand out a lot of these drips and it was so so much work. I also added multiple coats of stain in order to hide the residual drips. Finally when I had the stain on the slats looking like I wanted it to, I put some satin polyurethane over them to protect them. Now for install, I used a laser level to install these slats but you could just use a regular like six foot or four foot level. The first one getting straight is the most important because after that you can use a spacer and just build off of it. I'm using brad nails that are like an inch and a half long and I'm actually shooting them in at crisscrossing angles like this. If you shoot your nails straight into the slat they can just pull right out of the drywall. This is a good example like showing this concept but if you shoot them diagonal then they will actually hold really really well. You don't want to use a nail that's too long though. You can see mine don't poke out the back of the drywall. You just want to be wary of using a nail that might interfere with like wiring and such behind your walls. This works even for the ceiling. So what I did with the ceiling in order to install them solo, I put up like a ledge board. I just put a scrap piece of lumber up into the wall, nailed it in quick, and then I could put one end of my slat on that ledge and put one nail on the other side. Then I used my spacer to line up the slat all straight and continue nailing at crisscrossing angles. It's holding perfectly, no sagging, and I'm really happy with this install method. The slat wall turned out so beautiful. It matches the trim work nicely. I think it is a feature that really fits with the time period of the home. I picked these luxurious curtains off of Amazon that are actually really affordable because they're faux velvet and they match perfectly with my brooklinen sheets. It's a great repetition of that color throughout the room's design. I also had trouble picking a rug. Originally I was thinking like, oh my accent color of maroon could be in the rug, but when I put a maroon rug in the space I hated it and quickly like rolled it back up. It just wasn't gonna work. I ended on a neutral rug from Ruggable and this was a repurposed rug from another space as well. I got the bed for a total of a hundred dollars. I did have to buy a mattress new, so I actually got a really good deal on a mattress. I thought mattresses were like 800 bucks minimum for a queen, but this one was on Amazon. It's linked in the description. It's not expensive at all. It was under 300 bucks. So now it is time to put the whole room together. I did a lot of thrifted pieces to style this room. I got this vintage birdcage at a garage sale for 10 bucks and it is so cute. I figured out how to put a plant inside of it to display like a Hoya crawling plant. Without further ado, let's get to the reveal. It started out really plain. If you remember where this bedroom came from to what it is now, it's amazing what some carpentry work, new flooring, paint, and really awesome furniture can do for a space. I am so so happy with how it looks and all the colors look calming and beautiful together. The secretary especially is a really cool piece of furniture. I added a little chair, like a vintage chair that I got at an estate sale, next to it that you could move into place and use this as a desk. But it's also nice storage and then both of the closets that I redid are like beautiful and clean now and functional again. The louvered closet doors just needed a really good cleaning and they look perfect. The baseboard trim getting redone made a huge difference in making this room look brand new. The luxurious curtains set off by that Brooklyn embedding like makes all the textiles in this space so cozy. The wood slat wall feature really grabs your attention as you walk into the room and there's just so much visual interest with the birdcage hanging from the ceiling, the pops of red color throughout the design. I really really love how this room turned out. I'd love to know in the comments below what your favorite part was and also I'd love for you to show some support to our sponsor, Brooklinen, by clicking on the link in my description. Have you ever tried their bedding? I swear you won't regret it. When I first started using Brooklinen sheets, I noticed that it was easier for me to stay temperature regulated and asleep through the whole night. I definitely recommend them. Designing this space was super fun for me and I love how I was able to repurpose so many pieces of the makeover and then also so many vintage pieces I could bring back to life in the furniture. If you are inspired by this video, you can click share, you can subscribe to my channel to see more home DIY and room makeovers, and if you want to financially support Welcome to the Woods, you can follow the link in my description to my Patreon page. This is a list of my current patrons who are the coolest. Thank you so much for watching, we'll catch you again next time.