This Cozy $250 Bedroom Redo Is Proof You Should Always Use What You Already Have
It’s possible to give a room a refresh using mostly what you already own. Just ask DIYer Kylen Chen-Troaster (@nihaokylen), who put that mindset to the test with a $250 makeover of her Los Angeles bedroom.
“Our apartment has a fairly standard, boring gray [and] white base,” Kylen says. When she moved in, she and her partner, Paul, added a bed and a shelf with floating nightstands that they’d had for about four years, but “I didn’t love how it felt in this space,” Kylen says.
Kylen says she especially wanted to keep Los Angeles living (read: earthquakes) in mind with her bedroom refresh and keep things lower to the ground.
The project consists of mostly the same furniture from before.
To start off, Kylen lowered the bed and lowered the shelf from before, and added trim to the floating nightstands. “[We] changed out the hardware for a more minimal and hidden look with the brackets and added the curtain rod hangers for a fun brass pop,” Kylen says. The new bamboo rod is also nice for wrapping greenery and cool bulb lighting around without having to worry about anything falling.
“We did screw the brackets into the wall, but those are the only holes from this project,” Kylen says. “And to anyone who’s worried about quakes, don’t worry — everything above the shelves is secured to the wall or board.”
A Command strip headboard hack creates a statement.
And the new texture behind the bed is actually bamboo pole wrap, adhered to the wall with Command strips. “As a renter, I’m always on the hunt for reversible and renter-friendly solutions,” she says. “This, luckily, is a combo of both!” The texture and wood tone helped warm up the space, and Kylen says it’s one of her favorite parts of the project.
Best yet, the entire transformation took just one afternoon. “I love that we were able to reuse our previous setup and just upcycle it into a more aesthetically pleasing version of the hanging bedside table setup,” Kylen says. “I love seeing our cozy bedroom setup after a long day, and it just looks so put-together and custom with a minimal amount of upfront effort.”
Inspired? Submit your own project here.