after room makeovers | 7 Before And After Room Makeovers

After room makeovers — a quick note to anchor this piece for readers.

After room makeovers: Quick notes

There’s no April Fools here today.

Just a really good before picture.

I’m in the middle of redecorating our bedroom (I’m sharing the design plan tomorrow), and I thought of where the room started.

This is a before picture of when we moved back into the house.

That fireplace? It’s downstairs in the family room. That cable? It’s long gone. That ceiling fan? It’s introduced itself to the curb? That carpet? It’s long gone and we even painted the plywood that lay beneath.

But that guitar?

That guitar is still around.

A really cute guitar player with twinkling eyes was just strumming songs on it last week.

So today? Let’s celebrate some of the best before-and-after makeovers I’ve ever shared on this blog.

If you like a really good before? This is the post for you.

Here are 7 befores with some REALLY GOOD afters.

1. Before and after office makeover

Sigh.

Just looking at this room makes all the memories come flooding back in one giant tidal wave.

I’ve walked through the doors of this office more years than I can count.

Before the internet was a thing.

Before email and phones that snap photos.

Before online meetings.

Before blogs or websites or social media.

Life (and this office) was a little simpler then.

I remember sitting across this desk from my father and pouring out my heart and all of my teenage angst and listening as he righted my world with sage words of wisdom and a sympathetic ear.

But even rooms full of memories need a makeover sometimes.

Now the office looks like this.

You can see the before and after office makeover here.

2. Before and after bedroom

Here’s another before picture of the bedroom from the first post.

Same carpet.

Same ceiling fan.

The walls were painted SW Blonde (I know because I watched my mother paint them when I was in college).

There was a textured border at the top of the room with a piece of molding.

There was a cut-out in the wall (not really sure why it was there).

We made changes along the way. We painted the walls and painted the ceiling and took out the fireplace and the ceiling fan and pulled back the carpet and painted the plywood subfloors.

WAIT until you see what this room looks like NOW.

You can see the before and after here.

3. Before and after bathroom

This is the bathroom I lived in growing up.

If I close my eyes I can still smell the Aqua Net and hear Flock of Seagulls blaring over the boom box.

It’s a jack and jill bath upstairs at the new (old) house. My bedroom was on one side and my sisters’ bedroom was on the other side. They shared a bedroom and I got my very own.

We shared this bathroom that had been updated in the 1950’s.

Aqua tile on the floor and white square tile on the walls and a built-in toilet paper holder and mirrors with the mirror kind of flaking off.

It really needed updating. The 1950’s were a thing of the past.

So we tore the bathroom down to the studs and took part of the closet to make a bigger vanity for the twins and replaced the toilet and refurbished the tub and tiled the room to the ceiling.

And now?

You can see the before and after bathroom makeover here.

4. Before and after bedroom

This is what Westleigh’s room looked like when we bought the house back.

It had the original shiplap painted in stripes.

This used to be my bedroom when I was growing up and I had the prettiest Laura Ashley wallpaper on top of the shiplap.

So when we bought the house back, I knew the room needed a makeover.

Not just a little makeover….

…a new space.

A new design plan.

A new rug.

A new set of bedding.

And most importantly?

A new color (do you remember what color we painted the walls?)

You can see the bedroom makeover here.

5. Before and after office

Here’s where we started.

Here’s where the entire project began.

I wanted to makeover a space at my incredible sister-in-law’s home. This is the before of her office.

She has four children and 5,000 things to do every day, and life, and rooms can get a little overwhelming.

This room kind of became a catch-all for everything that didn’t have a home.

It had mismatched furniture and needed a little organization and storage.

I asked her what she wanted for her space. She said she needed:

1. Organization

1. Storage

1. Pretty paint colors on the wall

1. A few decorating ideas

1. To incorporate the existing desk in the space that my brother had built

Sharing all the befores and afters in the space.

You can see the office makeover here.

6. Before and after bedroom

When the twins were born, this is the room that they came home to.

We had a house (you can see the house before Thistlewood here) that we lived in that was a couple of blocks away, but we were in the middle of renovations and the house was full of dust and the twins were preemies who were born at 29 weeks and when they finally came home from the hospital after a month they both weighed right around 4 pounds.

Way too little to be around dust.

So we temporarily moved into my parents’ home.

Right into this bedroom.

There was a full-sized bed pushed all the way to the left and the crib was on the wall to the right. They shared a crib because they were so tiny. I was so nervous and scared and I paced this floor more times than I can count with those tiny little babies in my arms. This room has come full circle after we bought the house back and now Whitney lives here (with Westleigh just across the way).

And now?

The room looks like this.

You can see the entire makeover here.

7. Makeover at my mother’s home

This is a bedroom at my mother’s house. It’s tucked upstairs at the end of the hallway for the occasional guest. This is actually where we stayed when we renovated our current house.

My mother has lived alone since my father passed away and sometimes it gets a little lonely.

I wanted to brighten her day. I wanted to treat her and make her feel special. I wanted her to have a room she could escape to. A place that was warm and welcoming and full of all the things and colors that she loved.

The challenge with this room? As you can see in the before pictures, it has a sloped ceiling and shorter walls. She also sustained some water damage from all the recent storms. Our goal was to fix the water damage and create an accent wall that incorporated the slanted ceiling and turned it into an advantage rather than an obstacle.

You can see the entire makeover here.