Hey guys! Life has been crazy around here. Lots of curve balls and things…. nothing I can’t handle though. Seriously, I don’t like to boast, but I really feel like a super mama… and papa. I’ve got a few more minutes to myself before the kiddo wakes up and then it’s go go go time again, but in the meantime, I thought I would leave with you a guest post from one of my wonderful sponsors, Tiffanie over at Corner Blog. She’s a pretty awesome woman with some really amazing talents. Her works has even been featured on Ohdeedoh/Apartment Therapy a few times 🙂 If you haven’t checked out her blog already, please make sure you do. Today she’ll be sharing with you a tour of one of the rooms she designed in her home. It’s beautifully done and is great inspiration for smaller homes with kiddos. Have a wonderful weekend everyone and don’t forget to stop by and check out Corner Blog 🙂
Hi there! My name is Tiffanie. I’m a reader, sponsor and big fan of Ohdeardrea. I’m also an architect, dancer, and mother of two gorgeous children (if I do say so myself) living in the center of San Francisco, and I have a blog called “corner blog“. I love to write about the little projects I create for and with the kids, our life in San Francisco, some of my old and new artwork, and how lucky we are to all be here, together, right now.
One of the little projects I worked on recently was renovating my daughter’s bedroom. The room was featured at Apartment Therapy, but I’d love to give you a quick personal tour of it myself. We rent a flat in an old Victorian building, so we were limited in what we could do. I did manage to rip out the old, gnarly carpet and replace it myself (with a six-month-old baby strapped to my back, I might add)!
Here’s what happened: 
Our daughter Stella was a champion breastfeeder and co-sleeper. When she finally weaned herself at 31 months, we transitioned her out of our bed and into her own bed in our room. When Stella was almost four, her brother Oliver came along. Our bedroom became WAY too crowded, and at the same time her father started a job out of the home and didn’t need his office/studio anymore. So I embarked on the renovation. The goal was to give Stella a room to call her own, while maintaining a decent work area for her dad, a sound designer, producer and engineer, who works from home once a week. And if we ever needed to use the desk at night, I wanted to protect Stella from the glare of the computer. 
Here’s the final product:

To see the rest of the gorgeous space….

Here’s her kitchen: 
Building Stella’s kitchen was really fun. She had been accumulating these pieces since she was a about two-and-a-half, and they were all hanging out in our living room. I was so happy to get them out of our living space. I built the counter out of her dad’s old keyboard tray, cantilevered off the top of an old crate. I found the vintage Coca Cola crate on Etsy, which holds all of her cups and little trinkets for the kitchen. After this photo was taken I installed a little curtain below the red stove to cover up the storage area.
An Ikea kitchen storage unit mounted under the stove (and above mentioned curtain):
The stuff we store:
The stuff we cook!:
Stella is six now, and we still love playing in that kitchen. I must admit, half the reason her kitchen is so robust is to encourage me to get in there and play. I love this sort of thing!
Moving on, the way I was able to separate Stella’s bed and playspace from her dad’s workspace was to build a crate divider. I found several vintage fruit crates on Etsy and attached them together (and cabled them to the ceiling, etc. etc.) so that they will not topple in a quake. They are in between her dad’s desk and her bed. All but one of the crates are open on the desk side, used as bookshelves, but one opening faces Stella’s bed, so she can keep photos and knickknacks and such nearby while in bed. Natural light comes over the top of the crates to the desk area, while protecting Stella from computer glare at night.
Office on the left/bedroom on the right:
Dad’s side, painted in a darker tone to delineate it a little more:
Stella’s side:
We removed and stored the ugly mirrored closet doors over in the office area and hung this birch tree tapestry over the closet. Stella’s small dresser and all of dad’s hanging clothes are in that closet. I found that mid-century looking pendent lamp at Goodwill for, like, eight bucks. Yay!
What else? The space under Stella’s bed is now a great little library, pretend camper, and where Oliver will sleep when he finally weans and leaves our bed!
No, it’s never this clean. I overstaged:
Oliver in a hedgehog costume. I just guaranteed Drea thousands more hits to her blog. You don’t know how much traffic I get from people googling “hedgehog costume”. Strange!
The view from below the bed.
Which brings me to one of my favorite parts of Stella’s room: the tree! Pretty much the day I started thinking about hanging a tree in her room, one walked right past me! Her preschool was removing a tree from the back play garden as I was dropping Stella off one morning, and I grabbed it. It’s so beautiful. I had these wonderful red bird lights I had purchased at Ikea years ago and finally they found a great home. 
The tree:
Here are some other nice things from about the room: 
A banner from The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, from an exhibit showing during the time of Stella’s birth. I collect these banners, by the way (see here).
Depression-era dresser, for Oliver and dad’s clothes.
The view from her window.
Collections in jars.
The last photos I want to share with you are the “before” photos, meaning before we did the work, and also before Oliver gets in there and rips it up. He can put that room in a state of utter disrepair in a matter of minutes! 
Before, when Stella and her dad used to share the space:
Before, during the transition out of the room:
Before Oliver:
Aaaand, after! 
Thank you so much for reading! I loved sharing this post here, I’m pretty pleased with how the room turned out. You can see the Apartment Therapy article here, and I hope to see you again over at corner blog! Thank you, Drea, for letting me share this on your wonderful blog!

12 Comments

  1. This is so awesome!!! I'm glad the before pictures were taken, otherwise I was gonna say "how is it possibly that clean with two kids?!" haha! love it!

  2. Thank you for all your sweet comments, they mean a lot to me! Drea has some great readers, and I'm poking my way through your profiles and blogs as the comments appear here. Thank you for reading!

    xoxo,
    Tiffanie

  3. I could keep looking at these photos – so many ideas-gems in each! Love it!!!

  4. I just had a duh moment. Mason jars for collections! Such a better idea than the shoe boxes we are currently using.
    What a great space!

  5. great inspiration. so simple! and I can totally relate to the 'after.' they're quick buggers 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

  6. What an adorable room! We have the same beds for our kids and painted the side panels with chalkboard paint, but I am loving the sea green she used on them!

  7. i love that post. the room for stella is perfect and i really like how she seperate her daughters space and her husbands working space. i jsut love it.

  8. ahhh love love love the pics of her space!!! inspiration!

    the tree is awesome!
    and the last picture the "after"… oh how im so used to a sight like that! lol

    silentloveyou.blogspot.com