Teen Bedroom Remodel Plans

Behind the scenes of planning and starting my son’s bedroom remodel.

If you’ve been following my Instagram Stories, you’ve been seeing me doing things you haven’t seen before. Ripping out walls, rocking power tools, and making big moves in my son’s bedroom. We are rounding the half-way point of the process, and I wanted to share the whole vision I have for his room, as well as a little backstory on why we’re going all-out on this space.

Burris Family Forever Home Backstory

In case you’re new here, three years ago we built a brand new house. Complete new construction in a brand new cul-de-sac with only three other existing houses. We were number four of 22. My son Noah had a gigantic bedroom upstairs; bigger than any room in the house, including our living room. And we installed the most awesome wall mural wallpaper ever in there. Oh and his best friend lived right next door.

But things just didn’t feel right. As more houses started to pop up the street got smaller and smaller, and things just weren’t looking the way we were told they would by the builders of the neighborhood. My husband and I just had this gut-feeling that we made a mistake.

So two months after installing that awesome mural in that humondo bedroom that my son and his BFF spent all their days in, we stumbled across a house we instantly fell in love with and put in an offer immediately. Two months after that we were moving. My son was devastated. He didn’t want to leave his room, he didn’t want to leave his friend, and he didn’t want to move again because he constantly told us that house was his dream home.

To give you a good scope of the changes he had to deal with, his new room could fit in half of his old room. And he didn’t have an upstairs floor to himself anymore; now he’s right off the dining room. Oh and his best friend is now thirty minutes away. Talk about a jerk move for Mom and Stepdad, right? That’s why we needed to pull out all the stops in this new room.

The Design Plan For Noah’s Bedroom

Now that I’ve gone all Debbie Downer on you, let’s skip to the fun part. Since the room is so small, we had more of an opportunity to make a big impact for a smaller budget. He really loved his wallpaper mural in the old house and we considered doing the same thing all over again.

But then a company called Woodgrain invited me to be a part of a competition against some other bloggers to create a wood accent wall. I knew that would totally elevate his room into the grown up space he’d love so I agreed to compete.

I sat down with Noah and asked what he wanted in his new room. His window faces a full-on forest of trees, so he wanted to play into that with a forest theme. He asked for lots of metal, wood, and green, and mostly white walls to make his Lego displays pop.

So here’s what I came up with. Definitely a teenage cabin in the woods, right? Our budget is small and most of it will be eaten alive by these post-pandemic lumber prices, so we will be repurposing his existing furniture for now. We’re thinking of this renovation as a Phase One. Later we will swap furniture and build wall shelving, but that will come later.

Project Punch List

My husband and I will be doing all the work while Noah is on vacation with his dad, and we will reveal it to him when he gets back. He asked for it to be a surprise, so I blocked him from my Stories and he currently has no idea what it looks like right now. Super exciting, right? I’ll definitely video his reaction.

Here’s the big to-do list of projects for Phase One:

• Tear out wood paneling and chair rail from back wall
• Cover popcorn ceiling with cedar planks
• Paint three walls Swiss Coffee by Behr
• Create accent wall with MDF 1×3 boards from Woodgrain
• Paint accent wall bluish-green (exact color tbd)
• Spray paint ceiling fan blades black with Rustoleum Primer+Paint
• Install two metal pegboards from WallControl for Nerf Guns/Light Sabers
• Rearrange furniture to better suit the space
• Get new bedding
• Create a better way to display Legos on shelves
• Add a dresser to free up closet space

Later on in Phase 2, we will install a custom closet system and replace his freestanding bookshelves with wall mounted shelves, but we will save that for later this year. Lumber is just too expensive for that kind of project at the moment.

See The Finished Projects

The accent wall tutorial is right here on the blog and spoiler alert, it turned out exactly how I planned it would! And the ceiling planking was a lot easier than we expected it to be. I wrote this post sharing all the details and supplies we used to cover the popcorn ceiling. To see Noah’s reaction when he saw his finished bedroom (and get a video tour of the whole space) check out this IGTV video.