Toddler Room Re-Do On A Budget!

The time has come…

My toddler had officially outgrown his nursery room. Cue ugly tears from me.

This is what we were working with prior to beginning this project:

Truth be told I had been itching to make-over this room for a while. When we moved into the house in Fall 2021 this was the very first room to be “settled” in an attempt to make the transition to the new house easier for my then 1.5 year-old.

This is what the room looked like when we bought the home:

We hired a contractor to paint and switch out the overhead lighting, and then had a sub-contractor re-place the carpeted floors with LVP (literally the best idea I’ve ever had), and then I installed a Container Store Elfa closet system with a very cool wallpaper behind (linked below). We put up some wall-decor, black out curtains and brought in his same nursery furniture, and voila we had a functional room. As he continued to grow and other transitions began occurring (crib to toddler bed, etc) it became obvious that the room would need to be redone to upgrade from the leftover nursery decor into a full-fledged toddler space reflective of his unique preferences! Oh also I did an admittedly awful job installing the closet system (the top securement bar was not level) and it desperately needed to be replaced. I found a closet organization system on Facebook Marketplace that had some slight cosmetic damage but had never been installed by the previous owner and got quite the deal! It is an Allen and Roth brand which is typically found at Lowe’s but doesn’t appear to be available for purchase anymore but I found a similar one which I’ve linked below. I also found some paint on the “oopsies” discount rack at Home Depot (if you don’t already peruse this shelf it is a must-do), and ordered some wall-decals from Amazon. So I had the plan (in my head of course, never actually on paper), the materials, I just needed that perfect window of opportunity when my toddler would be occupied to allow the paint to fully dry, etc.

The Perfect Storm was born

Enter my in-laws begging to have my toddler come for a weekend visit…with my toddler off on a weekend getaway at “camp Grandma and Grandpa” the perfect opportunity presented itself! I got to work as soon as I was back from dropping my son off. First things first, we “demoed” the existing room and emptied everything out of there. We started out by taking down the wall decor, curtains, the old closet system, and temporarily relocating the furniture. I then got to work on the accent wall. Since this green is such a dark color I knew I only wanted to paint one wall in the room and was hoping this would really pop. This color is “Windsor Haze” by Behr in eggshell finish, however like I said above it was on the oopsies rack so I’m thinking whomever was mixing the color didn’t use the correct ratios as the color is more green than blue. Since the room had been painted about a year prior I skipped over priming and got to work painting after putting up tape (I am always so amazed by people who don’t need painter’s tape…I am not one of those gifted humans). It took two coats of coverage. While I was working away on the wall, my husband began assembling the closet organization system. We really wanted a custom, built-in look so this required some demo of the baseboards, and some wall-brackets that must-have been part of the organization system prior to us moving in! This part took us a while, it was probably the most time-intensive part of the room make-over but we got it done and I am SO pleased with the results!

The project continues

After the wall paint had dried I started adding the wall decals. I came up with a plan to incorporate all of my toddler’s current favorites. I purchased Amazon decals of airplanes, construction equipment, dinosaurs, and firetrucks. I was inspired by the wall-paper that is up in the closet. I wanted this wall to almost resemble a wallpaper and I am really happy with how it came out. This will be easy to adapt later-on as his interests change as he grows which was of the main reasons I chose this route!

Finishing Touches

Now onto my least favorite part of any project: the finishing touches. After our floors were installed the quarter-round was left unfinished as we were on a tight move-in deadline. My plan as I redo various rooms is to fill-in these nail holes and paint the quarter-round during the makeover. I filled in these holes with wood-filler, added caulking along any seams, sanded and then painted the baseboards and quarter-rounds, which is SUCH a pain, if it didn’t make such a big aesthetic difference I would veer towards skipping this step, but MAN what a difference it makes. I also painted the trim on the windows-I used a priming product (linked below) to avoid getting paint on the glass. We are planning to replace all of the windows in the home as they are the original single pane windows (crazy that they’re still standing from 1964) but that is a BIG project that we are spacing out, so in the meantime I’ve been working on painting this trim during each room makeover. Once all of the paint had dried it was time to put the outlet covers back on, re-hang the curtains, hang any additional wall-art and move the furniture back in! Just in the nick of time too as my toddler returned from his time at camp grandma and grandpa later that day!

Final Thoughts

I am SO pleased with how this room make-over turned out. Total spent: $121. Keep in mind that I re-used the wall-art and rug which definitely saved on cost but a room makeover for under $150 is a win in my book any day! I do have some additional plans, I just found a cement mixer lamp to replace the old nursery Pooh-bear one at a consignment sale (I found a similar one and linked it below), and am working on re-finishing a bedside table that I found at a thrift store that will incorporate the wall-paper again, I’ll write up a separate post about this, so stay tuned for that. The toddler bed also really needs to be re-painted and sealed (when my husband made it last year he didn’t seal it), he followed these plans to make the toddler bed. He also added an additional rail to the backside of the bed. However I’m planning to transition him into a big-boy bed within the next few months after his fourth birthday so I’ll plan to re-paint prior to putting into our attic storage. But for a weekend, budget project, I am pretty stoked with how much we were able to get done

My biggest tips/take-aways:

Don’t skimp on the finishing touches, I know, I know I hate them too but they really elevate your DIY projects and add that chef’s kiss finishing touch.
Check-out the oopsies paint rack, you may be surprised at how much of the paints will work for whatever project you have in the works
Don’t shy away from incorporating your child’s interests! Would this room be more aesthetically pleasing with fewer wall decals…quite possibly but he LOVES it, and to me, that is more important than being “Pinterest perfect.”