MFH Home Tour: Oldest Daughter’s Room

After several weeks of rain, the sun finally decided to make an appearance. Determined to make the most of it, I grabbed my camera and snapped pictures of another part of our house. Come see my oldest daughter’s room.

Our oldest is 14, and she’s spent all but the first year of her life in this room. The decor has changed quite a bit over the years, and it’s been fun to watch her own style emerge as she’s grown up. As I’ve mentioned before, I let my kids decorate their own rooms. I picked out the furniture, and I’ve left everything else to them. So, what you’re about to see is truly a room of my daughter’s own creation.

With three windows, her room gets lots of natural light. My husband and I made the roman shades in the dining room, but we bought the ones in her room. They do a good job of keeping the sun out in the morning – important if you’re a teenage girl who likes to sleep in on the weekends.

The antique iron bed came from a yard sale. It’s a full size.

Both of my girls like to switch their bedding out often, so this is what her bed looks like today. Who knows what colors she’ll choose next week? They have quite the stash of throw pillows in the linen closet.

Chenille is pretty much a constant on her bed, though. She likes to layer several different chenille bedspreads.

Her sister made the dream catcher that hangs over her bed. It was a gift. She made it out of vintage findings from our craft stash.

Here’s the left side of her room.

I got the dresser at Goodwill for $10 during a 50% off sale. It was in great shape, so I didn’t have to do anything to it.

This is what she has on top of her dresser at the moment. She swiped the “H” from the dining room. Everything else came from thrift stores and yard sales.

She was on the lookout for a typewriter for quite some time before she found this one at a yard sale. It seems to be the current color inspiration for her room.

This desk came from a Salvation Army. It was originally a built-in in someone’s home. I loved all of the little drawers. The antique chair was a yard sale find. It used to live in my office.

My daughter is big on houseplants, particularly cacti, so she has several in her room. They all came from yard sales.

She tucked a thread organizer under her plant to corral her collection of washi tape. It either came out of my mother-in-laws basement or my husband’s aunt’s basement. I don’t remember which. Either way, it’s well-suited to its new task.

And here are just some of her art supplies.

We’re all artsy types.

I painted the side of her desk with dry erase paint, so she could use it like a giant dry erase board. She used washi tape to divide it up into a calendar.

And here are some of the cacti that I mentioned. She found them at an estate sale a couple weekends ago. They were free. She stole the plant stand from me. Teenagers tend to just help themselves to things. If anything goes missing, there’s a good chance it’s in her room.

In true nerd fashion, she used the bottom of the plant stand to hold some of her most boring books. The Humongous Book of Geometry Problems and Barron’s AP Human Geography practice book are not my idea of fun reading.

Also note the stack of old dictionaries. She collects them.

Okay, flipping over to the right side of her room …

The lighted cherry tree is her latest estate sale find. She found it last weekend. Since it was towards the end of the day, it was half-off; so, she paid $7.50 for it. When she got home, she looked it up online, and found the same tree on Wayfair for $238! Needless to say, she was pretty pleased with herself.

I found the mirrored nightstand at a yard sale a couple years ago. I think I paid $10 for it.

Neither of my kids have a cell phone, but my oldest daughter has a rotary phone. Ha! She searched for quite a while, before she found this one.

Lockers are my go-to storage solution for kids. Both of my girls have a set in their rooms. This one came out of a curb pile. I just had to spray paint it white, and it was good to go. Proof I’m raising frugal kids: she’s uses one of her lockers as a gift closet.

I bought those three tin wall hangings at Habitat, and gave them a new paint job. The magnets are just little trinkets and toys that I glued magnets to.

She uses one side of her lockers to hang photos and momentos. The other side holds reminders.

Alright, now that you’ve seen her room, you have to see her closet.

At around 100 square feet, it’s roughly the same size as her sister’s room. Yeah, try explaining that to kid number two.

Usually 1920s houses don’t have much in the way of closets, but our house has big walk-in closets that are original to the house. This is the biggest one.

Since she has so much closet space, it’s serves as both a sitting room and a closet. She has a nice squishy armchair for reading (a Salvation Army find) …

and a bookcase full of books.

The shelf belonged to my husband when he was a kid. We gave it a paint job before our oldest was born, and it’s been in her room ever since.

To give her a spot to hang her jewelry, we hung a couple Ikea kitchen racks on one of her closet walls. I have the same set up in my closet, and so does my youngest daughter. When we find something that works, we stick with it.

She has lots of fun vintage pieces hanging on her rack.

And this is the color that we used on her walls. It’s Portabello by Sherwin Williams.

Well, that pretty much wraps up the tour of her room and our house. If you’ve missed any of the previous parts of our home tour, you’ll find them here.