Emma's Room

My little sister (age 17) decided she wanted to redecorate her room. She enlisted my help.
This is the before. By the way, I painted those walls many years ago when she was sharing a room with her sister and they had super cute bedding that coordinated perfectly. But it wasn't working anymore. She had long outgrown the butterfly theme.


She was inspired by a gym bag she has that is zebra striped with lime green trim. So that was our jumping off point. We painted the walls gray and came up with some organizational ideas for some of her things.

On the left is a huge magnet board I made for her. She has a lot of stuff to hang up. Most 17 year old girls do. You know, posters, notes, awards, photos, on and on. On the right is her little desk and some jewelry hangers I came up with.


We weren't able to get around to making a headboard like we wanted so I created the sunburst mirror to serve as a focal point above her bed. The scale is a little large but it's fine. She plans to add in some peacock feathers she has. That will look great.
We got new bedding and one or two other new accessories.

She wanted a way to display her lacrosse socks so we devised the green frame on the right of the lower photo.
It is just an old frame painted green with eyelet screws arranged on the sides. We strung some twine and voila! I thought we would hang them with clothespins but it turned out she could hang them right between the string. Handy!
Here is a close-up view of one of the jewelry hangers after we got to hanging it all up. There are hooks screwed into the frame as well as s-hooks hanging from the wire mesh to hang necklaces anyway she wants.
Many of the earrings can hang right on the metal mesh. Everything else is hung on hooks we added.
UPDATE: The metal sheets weren't sticking that great with the adhesive alone. So I ended up putting screws in the corners and other places I thought it needed them.

The luaun is only 1/4 inch thick and I had trouble finding screws that wouldn't go all the way through it. So I actually used a washer and then a decorative washer and then the shortest screw I could find at orange. I am sorry I don't have the length for you. Anyway, I think it looks way better with the screws anyway. It looks more finished.

Giant Magnet Board

I am helping my sister (age 17) redecorate her room. She had a lot of stuff hanging up all over her room so I thought a big magnet board would be nice to have. Then she could corral all her pictures, notes, certificates, ribbons, etc in one place.

I went to Orange and looked around for something metal to use. First I tried magnetic paint which was a dismal failure. It was just never strong enough no matter how many coats I did.

Then I looked at corrugated roofing material. Great cost wise, but the ridges made it kind of impractical.

I looked at the sheet metal they had there but one little 12 inch square was like 4 bucks.

Then an employee helped me look at other options. I finally ended up in the plumbing aisle. They sell "panning" which I guess they use to make pans for under water heaters and such? No idea. Anyway, it was nice and thin and magnetic and a decent sized piece was just a little over 6 bucks. I bought 4 and decided I would adhere them to a piece of luaun I had in my garage (free for me, but about 11 bucks if you go and get yourself some).

I cut it to size (giving a 2 inch border around the sheets of metal).


Primed the edge with spray paint.
Painted the edge with spray paint.
Used this spray adhesive. It works okay but I probably should have roughed up the smooth surfaces a little. The metal seems to lift up a little on some of the edges. By the way, I really needed my daughters help to get the sheets in place after they had been sprayed with glue. It was tricky. If you are off just a little, you can pull the metal up but it will be bent and pretty much unusable after that.
Here is the finished product. I would say it is about 3 ft x 5 ft or so.
The panning has a little fold at the bottom. I thought it worked out perfect because she can stick photos (or whatever) right in the channel without a magnet.
I need to look at it again because I might screw down the metal in some spots just to be sure it is all secure. I probably should have glued it down with liquid nails instead.