Budget Friendly Modern Girl’s Bedroom with Vintage Touches

A complete bedroom makeover for a young girl with a ton of DIY projects. Modern wainscotting with plywood, a DIY loft bed, refinished vintage furniture, and a multi-colored floral wall stencil to look just like wallpaper all give the room a vintage modern feel with budget friendly projects.

My girls have been sharing this room for over 6 years, first the older two shared this room, and then the third moved in about a year ago once our fourth girl was born. Needless to say, the room is not very big, and things were feeling very, very cozy. Especially the closet and dresser – they were literally overflowing with 3 sets of clothes.

Here’s how the room has looked over the past 8 years:

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I set out to transform this room into a bedroom for my oldest daughter, who is now 10.

Here’s how the room looks now!

As you can see, the lofted bed is still here. (Here’s the tutorial on how to build a loft bed.) I had no intentions of getting rid of it, as it helped to free up so much floor space in this small room.

But, I finally finished the ladder and installed a ceiling fan that is actually safe for a lofted bunk bed. (Here’s a full post on the best ceiling fans for rooms with bunk beds.)

For at least 2 years we just had to turn the ceiling fan off at night so the girls didn’t lose a limb climbing up to the loft, so it feels so good to have that project checked off the list.

Now that there’s not one (or two!) extra beds in the room taking up floor space, there is finally room for a little desk. I found this simple vintage desk on Facebook Marketplace, stripped it down to the natural wood, and sealed it with clear coat acrylic.

The chair was an estate sale find that I went to for the sole purpose of (hopefully) taking home one of the three chairs that the pictures showed. I waited for the last day of the sale (1/2 off day!) because I didn’t want to pay the original $40 they were asking per chair. Thankfully, there was still one left when I went on the morning of the last day!

All of my girls are in love with this hammock chair, and thankfully they’ve all agreed that anyone can use this chair as long as they are reading (or looking at pictures, since the 3rd is only 3).

It’s actually even bigger than I thought it would be, so I had to twist the rope on the top bar to shorten it up so it didn’t hit the floor. The girls can sit in it, or there’s enough fabric to extend their legs and lay in it too!

I made this macrame curtain last time I updated their bedroom (at the same time I built the loft bed) and decided to keep it as well. I love how it distracts from seeing inside the closet since it doesn’t have any doors, and I just wasn’t willing to part with it considering how much time it took for me to make!

And, of course, the walls obviously look just a little different than before. This faux DIY wallpaper that’s actually just a stencil ended up taking way longer than expected. The first few were fun, and then it just got a little monotonous so I would wait days between doing each one to muster up the motivation to tackle the next one. In the end, I’m so glad I did it, and my daughter loves it, so the time spent was well worth it.

My daughter has requested a little bookshelf for up near her bed, which I still need to build. I plan to make these easy shelf book or picture frame ledges I made in the nursery a few years ago.

I still love this dresser I found at our local Restore about 10 years ago. Its veneer is still in great condition, and those serpentine drawers are just everything! Here’s how I refinished this vintage dresser several years ago. This time, I just used a sample can of paint on the sides to give it a fresh new look.

I wanted a large scale piece to put on the dresser, but with how busy the wall stencil is, I needed something that didn’t have too much color.

I made this very amateur piece of art by slapping some leftover drywall mud on a piece of canvas, and used a couple of trowels to give it different textures. Here’s a full tutorial on how to make this DIY drywall mud art.

Budget Breakdown

Because I believe that making your home beautiful and a place you love can be done without spending a lot of money or buying everything new, I wanted to include how much I spent on the items in this room.

• Wall stencil ($46) and paint – $50
• Wall paint (Midnight in NY by Behr) for bottom of wainscot – $30
• 1/4″ plywood board to use for wainscot stiles – $18
• 4″ pine boards for top rail – $20
• MCM desk from FB – $30
• Hammock chair – $50
• IKEA duvet cover and sheets – $30
• Canvas for DIY wall art – $12
• Leftover clear coat and stain for desk and white paint for ladder – $0
• Reused the rug (even though I was so tempted to buy a new one!) – $0

For this update, I spent about $250, but if you add in the other DIYs from the last room update (macrame curtain rope cost $50 and the wood for the loft bed cost $40), the total still comes in below $350. Building the bed and buying second hand furniture definitely helped me to create this look without spending much money at all!

Just realized I forgot to include the cost of the ceiling fan. That was almost as expensive as the entire room – $160. But, it was a necessity and was the most budget friendly option I could find.

I rounded up a few products you could buy instead of DIY with a similar look.

• Hanging hammock chair
• Macrame curtain
• MCM desk from Anthropologie
• Fandelier ceiling fan and lights

I love decorating (and redecorating!) my home. This hobby of mine could become very expensive, very quickly, but instead I make it my goal to decorate by reusing, refinishing, and thrifting.

There’s something about pulling together a space with “leftovers” that is just so fun for me. Here are all the rooms I’ve transformed on a tiny budget.