I really hope you’ve enjoyed this week of Better After Gives Back! I had so much fun doing it. Here are the links to the last few days if you’ve missed anything: Part 1   Part 2  Part 3 Part 4

Let’s have a quick recap:

– As my blogiversary neared, I decided I’d like to do a little ‘giving back’ as my way of saying thanks to all those who have given to me over the years.

– I decided to do a surprise makeover for someone who could use a little pick-me-up.

– I chose Jessi, a single mom of four girls who moved herself into a tiny, drab bedroom after her divorce so that her girls could have the master bedroom.

– Jessi left town for a few days.

– I assembled a crew of friends and family, and we transformed her bedroom and bathroom into a space that mirrored her spunky, vibrant personality.

We managed to capture her reaction on video!  Remember, she had absolutely no idea that anything had happened. (If you’re reading this in a reader, you may need to click over).

Did you like the part where I pop out of hiding, give her a hug, then realize I’m 100% grimy and in no state to be recorded and awkwardly slink away?  Ha!

Once again, I have to give huge thanks to everyone that helped.  There is no way I could have pulled it off without the help and talents and kindness of Stephanie Alger and her crew, Franki Ely, Laura Earl, Krystal Avila, Dandi Wright, and their families. It was a lot of work, but so rewarding.

And a special thank you to Nicki Willis, who not only worked her tail off making sure everything was perfect for Jessi, she also captured the moment and created the video.  Check out her production company Prickly Pear Blooms Productions if you’re in the Phoenix area and looking for a great videographer.

And three cheers for Jessi, who now has a restful retreat full of light and good vibes. I hope she can feel the love of all her family and friends around her every time she walks in, and that she loves it as much as we all love her.

And one more big thanks to these kind-hearted companies who made it possible, Online Fabric Store, RustOleum, Reclaim Beyond Paint, and UGallery.

Till next time!

(This week I am sharing something I like to call ‘Better After Gives Back,’ which is a surprise makeover for someone whose home could use a little pick-me-up! Confused? Start here.)

I wanted to share a few details of the room today, and one of my favorites is this oversize print, “In The Air” by Ina Christensen.  It just sums up everything I wanted Jessi’s room to feel like: free-spirited, whimsical and fun!  A happy little reminder not to take life too seriously.  The colors are fantastic too.

This print and many more are available at UGallery.com, an online gallery that connect art lovers with artists.  They were so super awesome to work with and generously donated this artwork for Jessi’s makeover.

When I say they were awesome to work with, I truly mean it. My computer froze up in the middle of my order, so I called customer service and talked to A REAL PERSON.  And not some call-center robot, a real person from the real company, who fixed my problem by taking down my order by hand and inputting it the system herself.  Also, the art you order comes directly to you from the artist themselves, so there is tons of original work to discover that you won’t find everywhere else.  Very cool.

The nightstand was a yard-sale score, and I found the cute little owl lamp at Wal-Mart!

Where is this fabulous bedspread from, you ask?  I’ll tell you.  It’s from a pile of stuff we found in Jessi’s garage that she was planning to yard-sale.  Not so fast Jessi.  This bedspread is perfect. Look at all that texture, yum.  It just needed to be brought to life with pretty pillows, that’s all.

The jewelry storage was a fun little accessory that was born from these old drawer fronts:

I just spray painted them white, then used a bunch of fun Rustoleum colors on random hooks to create this display.

The little chair was an $8 thrift-store find, and the reason that it looks so good is that I didn’t recover it!  Credit for that goes to Laura; I would have thrown my staple gun through the window trying to recover all those round edges.

By now you are probably thinking: Ok Lindsey.  So, you broke into Jessi’s house while she was gone, spent three days feverishly transforming her bedroom and bathroom with the help of her friends and family, all without her HAVING A SINGLE CLUE that this was even going on, what the heck did she think about it?!?!

Stay tuned.  That part is tomorrow!

Update: Continue on to the final part here!

 Here are all the links if you’ve missed anything: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Sponsored in part by the awesome people at Rustoleum, Online Fabric Store, UGallery, and RECLAIM Beyond Paint.

(This week I am sharing something I like to call ‘Better After Gives Back,’ which is a surprise makeover for someone who could use a little pick-me-up! Confused? Start here.)

Jessi’s room was shaping up into the space I had imagined: light, airy, colorful and fun.  But her bathroom across the hall was another story.  Like the bedroom, it had long ago been decorated with her little girls in mind.  It had a princess theme going on, a deep beige color on the wall, and the cabinets were not in the greatest shape either.  0% worthy of a fun-loving-woman.

Even though it’s not attached to the bedroom, this is Jessi’s space, so I still wanted to tie the two together.  The bathroom got the same paint color as the bedroom, and then I brought in the coral and aqua colors with a few accessories.

Here’s a fun little story.  I wanted a great big shower curtain to go all the way up to the ceiling. But due to the serious time crunch, I was at the mercy of whatever the nearest store had in stock. Wouldn’t you know, NO ONE sells oversize shower curtains.

Then Jessi’s friend Laura, (who had a huge hand in helping out throughout this entire makeover) mentioned that she had some fabric that might work.  And she knew for certain that Jessi would like it, because it just so happened that she had bought it from Jessi!  Apparently Jessi had spotted this fabric at the fabric store, and loved it so much she bought several yards of it on a whim. But she never could decide what to do with it, so Laura offered to buy it from her and help her recoup the cost.

Laura couldn’t remember if the color would work or not, but she ran home to get it, and when she returned, we were all so excited to see that it was a perfect match!  And there was exactly enough to make an over-sized shower curtain.  And then I got verklempt over a shower curtain.

Nothing easier than adding color with towels.  I much prefer a towel bar over hanging towels on hooks, mostly because towels on hooks look like ghosts!

Another cute story: Jessi’s sister Dandi lives far away but wanted to play a part in the makeover too, so she ordered some colorful prints online and sent them to a local store for pickup.  We picked out the colors that looked best and framed them, then Jessi’s adorable niece Sara spent a ton of time decorating the frames.  How could you not feel anything but loved when you looked at that everyday!?

The vanity got some love as well, with a treatment from Reclaim Beyond Paint.  More than just paint, this is an extra durable technology that bonds to just about any surface, and doesn’t require tons of prep work.  No sanding, no stripping, no priming, that’s the promise!  And that was perfect for me, because ain’t nobody got time for that!  Seriously, I didn’t.  Jessi was coming home the next day.

Overall, it did everything it said it would.  It was super easy to apply.  I did about three coats total, and although the box suggested using a roller, I found that a foam brush gave me less texture.  It is meant to have a slightly textured finish, however, to help hide flaws and bond the paint better.  Comes in lots of colors, AND has a countertop refinishing formula as well. Check it out if you want to change up the look of your cabinets without a ton of hassle!

Sharing just a few more details tomorrow, thanks for hanging out!  I hope you’re enjoying Better After Gives Back!

Continue on to Part 4 HERE!!

Here are all the links if you’ve missed anything: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Sponsored in part by the awesome people at Rustoleum, Online Fabric Store, UGallery, and RECLAIM Beyond Paint.

(This week I am sharing a little something I like to call ‘Better After Gives Back,’ which is a surprise makeover for someone who could use a home decor pick-me-up! Confused? Start here).

I left you yesterday with just the before pics of Jessi’s bedroom, but you’ll get the afters today!  High five.

Remember, I had only spent literally four seconds in this room EVER to gather information so I could make a plan.  You’d think I would have at least taken a cell phone picture.  I did not.

So my quickly-formed plan consisted of definitely painting over all that green, and moving the bed so it would be on the wall that faces the door.  Jessi had taken the doors off her closet and was using them as a makeshift headboard, so I knew for sure I wanted to make her a headboard as well.

I knew this room also needed some bright and happy colors to better vibe with Jessi’s personality.  Luckily, her sister Stephanie is an excellent seamstress, so I planned to have her whip up a bunch of pillows to add color and pattern to the room.  I had mentioned this whole surprise makeover idea to the Online Fabric Store, and they were eager to help! They generously let me choose a few of their premier prints for this project, which was a major part of the room.

The next step was to wait for Jessi to leave town.  She was going to be away at girl’s camp for three days, so I gathered a few of Jessi’s friends and family to help me totally transform her bedroom during that time.  Unfortunately, right before d-day, Stephanie decided to go and fall down some stairs and break her back!!!  She somehow powered through and still managed to do a lot of the sewing, even though I would have much rather tied her to the bed and forbid her from moving at all.  She insisted she could handle it, and she’s doing better everyday, but sheesh!  What a rockstar. That is sisterly love, friends.

Ok, here is the moment you’ve been waiting for, pictures!

First things first, a pale gray on the wall to replace the dual shades of green, (and for the life of me, I can’t remember the color. Centurion Gray?  I’m the worst. Sorry).  The headboard is simple: plywood covered in foam and batting and hung directly on the wall with a cleat.

The fabric is called Chipper Storm Twill, and I love it!  The coral dandelion fabric on the pillows is also from Online Fabric Store and can be found here.

Before, the bed was pushed up almost all the way against the window, with hardly any room to walk around.  A little rearranging makes it feel so much more spacious!

We ditched the heavy green curtains for a white IKEA set, and sewed a little extra fabric up top for added length and a pop of color. (‘Pop of color’ is my least favorite phrase).

See that little picture rail all around the room?  Totally missed that on my initial four-second observation.  What to do?!  I didn’t want to tear it down and risk damaging the drywall,  and we were already pressed for time, so it stayed put.  I knew for sure I didn’t want to divide the room into two different colors though; it was already small enough that it didn’t need to be visually chopped in half.

So we just painted it right along with the walls, and it added a cool little decorative touch to the room that I wasn’t expecting.  How fun is that artwork?  It’s from UGallery.com, and I’ll be giving you some more details on that later on.

More to come tomorrow … oh snap, I haven’t even told you that I decided to makeover her bathroom too!

Continue on to Part 3 HERE!

Sponsored in part by the awesome people at Rustoleum, Online Fabric Store, UGallery, and RECLAIM Beyond Paint.

I’ve been up to something fun, and I’m finally sharing it with you!

Next month marks five years that I’ve been blogging now.  Five! Wowzers.  I could never have come this far without you, all you amazingly creative readers and fellow bloggers who so kindly and generously share your magic with me. Thank you thank you thank you.

As I was pondering on this thought, it occurred to me that it would probably be nice to do a little giving back.  I’m not talking about a giveaway or anything like that, there are plenty of those. Instead, my thought was to do something a little more hands-on. I wanted to organize a surprise/ambush makeover for someone who could really use it.  Someone who might appreciate a little pick-me-up in their home, courtesy of Better After, aka, me.

I decided to call it “Better After Gives Back!”

So I thought very hard about it. I asked around. And around. Polled my Facebook friends.  There were so many nominations for people in need that it was really REALLY hard to choose.

But I finally decided on Jessi.

Jessi is a single mom with four daughters.  After going through a divorce last year, she moved out of her home’s master bedroom and gave it to her girls.  She moved herself into their old bedroom, which had the bare basics.  Bed, dresser, mirror.  Truth be told, I don’t think she ever felt ‘at home’ in there, and she actually spent most nights sleeping on the living room couch.

No sir!  Jessi deserves better than that.  Jessi is one of the most vibrant and fun people you’ll ever meet.  She loves clothes and salsa dancing and nerdy stuff and she talks about a mile-a-minute, and she’s so full of color and life that a sad little bedroom was just not ok.

I told you she likes nerdy stuff.

She was nominated by a mutual friend, Nicki, and when her sister Stephanie explained more to me about her bedroom situation, I knew she was the one!

So here was my plan of attack. First, I needed to see this bedroom in person.  Even though I’ve known Jessi for a while, I’d never been to her home, so I enlisted Stephanie to help me out.  We concocted a scheme to make it seem like I needed to go to Jessi’s house, even though it is like, 30 minutes away, and even though I had never even been there before.  It was a really weak scheme.  Luckily, she’s not the suspicious type.

Unluckily, she was all hyper-self-conscious about me dropping by unannounced and nosing around her house, imagine that, and she went and closed the door to her room before I could sneak in there!  Pssh. I sneaked in anyway.

But then I was so hyper-self-conscious about being caught that I only peeked my head in for literally five seconds, tried to memorize as much as possible, and then left the house as weakly as I came.  I’m sure she thought I was insane.

Ok, so here comes the before …

Very small and very green.  And no match for Jessi’s sparkling personality.

Now, here’s the cruel part … I’m not showing the afters just yet!  Sorry!  (Unless you already saw them when in a horrible twist of events, I accidentally posted them first for a few hours on Saturday. Sigh. Let’s just pretend that never happened, ok?)

There’s a lot to tell and share, so I’m planning to spread it out just a bit over the week. You’ll have to get your instant-gratification somewhere else today.  But please come back tomorrow to see more! Can’t wait to share!

Continue on to Part 2 Here!

Don’t miss anything! Part 1   Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Sponsored in part by the awesome people at Rustoleum, Online Fabric Store, UGallery, and RECLAIM Beyond Paint.