VintageBlessings: Transforming a 1970s Bedroom into Farmhouse Style!

This summer, my daughter and son-in-law bought a cabin on a beautiful lake. It was quite the fixer-upper and to say I was a bit worried, would be an understatement.

It has only been a month, and the transformation is amazing. I will be posting photos of it as it comes along, but first, I wanted to share a special bedroom in it.

The cabin has 3 downstairs bedrooms and I asked if I could decorate one of them. We got a big thumbs' up.

Now, this is what we had to work with:

Ugh! The original room right from 1973, complete with green shag carpet, hollow core sliding doors and an awkward window, too high and too short.

My dream was to make it into a farmhouse/fishing cabin mash up. Something that both men and women would feel comfortable in.

Our kids painted the walls a soft gray and put down laminate floors. The stage was set!

Now for the budget. As cheap as possible!

The room was overcome by the large, dark, hollow core sliding doors. We decided to transform them into barn doors. We took them off the runners, primed and painted them white. We took a 1/4" sheet of plywood from Lowe's and asked them to cut it at 3" wide pieces. These were then attached to the 2 side doors (the middle one would have to remain without the strips so the side doors could move over the middle one). I bought farmhouse handles on Amazon. When we re-installed the doors, we put the middle one in the back, and the two side doors were brought to the front. I really love how they turned out!

Cost: 1 4 x 8' (1/4" deep) piece of plywood $22, left over paint and nails/glue, Handles $18.59.

Total for total door transformation $40.59

Now for the wall behind those doors...I wanted an accent wall with a rustic feel, at as little cost as possible and we decided to do a faux brick with plaster and paint.

We started with a light grey wall, if yours is not a light color like gray or taupe, you will want to paint it first, thinking of the color of your "grout"

Using a level, we marked off the horizontal lines first with a pencil, noting that the ceiling was not level and that we would have to make do on the top"grout" line, making sure the "bricks" are perfectly level.

After the horizontal lines are drawn, we cut out a stencil of a brick, with a piece of cardboard. We decided that 8 x 3" would be perfect for us. We placed the brick stencil at the top left side and drew our vertical line on the right side. We continued across the wall. When starting the second row of bricks, we folded our brick stencil in half, and started with a half brick, then continued across with full bricks.

After all the lines are drawn out, start to tape the horizontal lines, leaving tabs at the ends of the walls, these will be important when you are pulling the tape off.

Now, tape the vertical lines, being careful to not have any overhang past where the "grout" would go.

After taping, we decided that the tape lines were much too perfect, and we really wanted an old-world used brick look. We took a butter knife and gently pushed the tape around to give the look of crumbled old bricks.

Next is the really messy part. Apply your Spackle with a trowel, we used a 4" one to apply, and then a 2" one to add lines and texture, thinking about what a brick surface should look like. When finished with the Spackle, we immediately started pulling the tape off (very messy, use gloves and tarps).

That was all we could do, until it dried completely. The next day, around 24 hours later, the "bricks" were dry enough to paint.

We used acrylic paints in black, white and brown, mixing up 4 different shades of grays from cool to warm. Using a 1" artist brush, we dry brushed very little paint in a random fashion. Go lightly and sporadically over the wall, then stand back and decide if you want more color.

We were thrilled with the outcome!