Mia's Teen Bedroom Upgrade

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Remember that loft bed I built for Mia back in 2020 when she was 11?

Well, she’s requested it come down! I was heartbroken for a while…took me a few months to come to terms with her wanting more of a teen room, but once I came around I was actually excited about this project! I got to partner with Zinus for her new bed frame and mattress and I was on a time crunch on when I needed to post so one day I decided we would just go for it and started the tear down process! But if she wanted this taken down she was going to have to help! DEMO DAY!

Tyler was NOT thrilled that this was coming down, he wanted his little girl to stay little. Plus he said it was a pretty cool bed, even though he thought I was crazy for building it in the first place! Sometimes when I tell him my crazy idea’s he doesn’t understand and has trouble picturing the finished product in his head, this loft bed was the biggest project I had ever wanted to do at the time so he wasn’t quite sure about it. Now days he has learned to trust the process….I think. He finally came around as well and came in and helped us take it down. It would have taken DAYS without his help!

He basically man handled everything and pried all the shiplap off so fast! Mia and I were too careful and it was taking a really long time.

Then he grabbed the sawzall and sawed it into pieces, we just helped hold it while he did that.

Here’s the house tour of Mia’ bedroom. From where we started, the loft bed and to what it is now.

People say they like demo, but honestly it’s not my favorite part! I love the finishing work because I know it’s close to done and I’ll get to see the finished product and compare the before and after photos! But we got it done and it took WAY longer than I thought it would! Maybe 5-6 hours! Plus the lag bolts had been basically countersunk on accident so they were really hard to get out, he had to hammer the lag bit into the wood to be able to grab hold of the bolt. I used wood filler to cover the screw heads on the top of the ladder so we had to dig that out! lol! I really thought this was going to be up forever!

We got the room cleaned up and free of saw dust and debris and I started setting up her bed, we upgraded Mia’s bed from a full to a queen. She picked out this bed frame herself from Zinus. It was pretty easy to put together and she really likes it. OMG the mattress is so dang comfortable! It’s memory foam! This post is not sponsored by Zinus, we just really love the products we’ve received from them for their Instagram campaign.

We tried setting it up the same way that she had the loft bed facing first.

I made Mia fill the nail holes and let me tell you…there were a TON! We had to fill the larger lag bolt holes and the smaller brad nail holes from hanging shiplap. She was annoyed but this is what she wanted lol! So I didn’t feel too bad.

After she filled the holes I found some brad nails left in the wall and had to remove those with pliers and then fill them and sand everything down before painting. I don’t have a photo of the painting process but we went over the whole room, including the ceiling, with Alabaster by SW.

I even removed the old door trim and replaced it with the craftsman style that is in the rest of my house, she’s been requesting that for a while now. This is a super easy process and you can read more about replacing door trim here.

This is the easiest kind of door trim to do in my opinion, because you don’t have to make any 45 degree cuts, it’s all 90 degree flat cuts. I use 1x3s on the sides, then I assemble the top piece made out of 1x2s and 1x4s before installing it to the wall. I put it all together and install it with just my brad nailer, this is by far my favorite and most convenient tool. I use it ALL OF THE TIME.

I caulked everything and wood filled where I needed to and then painted all the trim Accessible Beige by SW on Mia’s request. I was super happy with her decision because now this trim would match the rest of the house.

Here’s a quick before and after of this color and what a big difference it makes. It’s so neutral that I really love it accented all throughout my house.

Tyler installed a new ceiling fan for her since we took her hold one out when she had the loft bed so she wouldn’t knock herself out on moving blades! This fan came with a remote control which is great!

Mia wanted a night stand she found on Pinterest but Amazon was sold out and the dimensions were way too small, so I decided to build her one just like it in the size we would need. I love building furniture so this would be a fun project! Plus, once I saw what materials I had on hand this turned into a scrap wood project so it would be no extra cost and I’d get some of the scrap wood out of my garage!

The scrap wood I was using was a mix of 3/4in thick sanded plywood and 3/4in thick MDF, I was planning to paint it so the material didn’t matter too much. I started by cutting everything down to size and putting it together with pocket holes.

I got the outside put together and it looked like this.

I rounded the corners by tracing a circle on the edge with a stain can because it was about the size I needed, then I cut the excess off with my jigsaw and then I sanded it smooth with my orbital sander, if that makes sense?

I put the inside together with more pocket holes. I added the pocket holes to what would be the drawer side so they wouldn’t show.

As you can see here for the drawers I just added pieces on the sides and a stopper on the back. I didn’t have enough scraps to add whole pieces to the insides here. These drawers won’t have drawer slides, they will just slide on the pieces on the sides.

I put the drawers together and test fit them and they fit perfect! These drawers aren’t all the same exact size but they are pretty close.

Of course I needed to make sure it was going to fit perfectly in her room before going any further.

Before I could paint, I needed to make those plywood and MDF edges smooth. I wood filled the edges and then sanded them smooth. Then I got to work painting it. I used Alabaster by SW, but because I didn’t want it to match the walls exactly I added a little dash of Accessible Beige by SW so the colors would all flow nicely. I spray painted it with my Graco paint sprayer, this thing is a dream if you spray a lot! It’s 100% worth the investment!

I got it all painted but I still had more up my sleeve!

I added an LED light strip!

I started routing out the top with my Milwaukee router. Remember, it sometimes gets worse before it get’s better!

Then I took the backing off of the LED strip and stuck the lighting inside the routed out area, don’t worry, I have a plan!

I had some leftover tile from my friend Andrea’s bathroom tiling project and I noticed they let light through. So I cut those down to size and then installed them over the top with Loctite Construction Adhesive.

Do you trust me yet?? This is how it looks with the lights off, so cool! Now, I will say, if I knew you’d be able to see the strip so vividly I would have tried to be straighter with the router lines, but this is for a teen and she thinks it’s pretty cool.

It also comes with a remote and you can change it to whatever color you’d like, make it flash in different patterns or set a timer.

I ended up adding on the same pulls that I put on my bathroom toilet paper cabinet and I think they look perfect on her night stand! I did have to rub bar soap on the drawers (just the sides and bottom, not the front) and inside where the drawers go so the drawers would slide easier and not stick, worked like a charm! Kind of how you’d wax a surf board. I had to google how to make the drawers slide good and that’s what I found.

Then I got these super easy to install wall shelves, I don’t have any photos or videos of me installing them because I wen’t live on amazon and didn’t record the video. Anyways, these shelves have these little metal things with prongs that you just push into drywall with your hands alone, no tools needed! It even comes with a level! Then you just set the shelves on the hooks and you’re good to go! Mia decorated them herself.

And then she hung some faux vines I found on Amazon above her headboard, now she has her teen Boho room she’s been dreaming of! She made an entire Pinterest board for it! Here’s some before and afters for you!

These ones are from before we moved in:

These are when she was little…I miss those days! She was about 8 years old in 2018 and still shorter than me! This bed was a Facebook Marketplace find and she still loved pink. I painted that back wall light pink and half the right wall and then added gold sticker dots in a wave pattern.

Then these are after I built her loft bed back in 2020. I also built her dresser.

And this is where we are at now! I love that she has grown into her own style and knew exactly what she wanted, this may change in a few years, but for now she loves it! The vines she was insistent on putting up, they appeared in all of her Pinterest saves! I even let her take the after pictures because she likes photography and she’s getting pretty good at it.