Vintage Summer Camp Bedroom in a 1970s Ranch Remodel

Welcome to Part 1 of our 1970s lakeside ranch remodel: the Vintage Summer Camp Bedroom. 

I’m kicking off a new ranch house remodel series with one of my favorite rooms in the house– the vintage fishing camp themed bedroom. This bedroom is layered with genuine summer camp nostalgia, from a $200 thrifted log cabin bed to a framed 1971 map of Lay Lake we found in a closet, real Eagle Scout memorabilia, and three generations of trophy fish on the wall. Almost every piece of decor in here has a story.

Here’s the full before and after room reveal!

Watch the Room Reveal Video:

Decorating Style: Vintage Summer Camp

If you’ve seen Camp Wandawega in Wisconsin all over your feed, you already know the look: army green wool camp blankets, red plaid Thermos bottles, heavy log cabin furniture, old boat oars used as wall decor, and that authentic Americana quality bedding that today’s knockoff Amazon purchases can’t easily fake. But make it less “Grandpa’s stinky fish camp” but more wholesome midwest-meets-the-Adirondacks style. Like when the upperclass escape from the big city but still want all the luxuries of home vibes.

Well, it’s having a serious moment right now.

Lucky for me, I’ve been decorating in this similar style for almost twenty years, so I’ve amassed quite a collection of campy nostalgia along the way. When my son was a baby, we decorated his nursery in a Great North Woods theme, and after 18 years, I still have all of those original pieces. He’s headed off to college now, so the nursery decor needed a new place to land. Actually it had been decorating the walls at our previous lake house for a while now, but little baby Garrett was the original owner.

The leather paintings on the wall, the fishing lure lamp, the moose pillow, and the pressed tin fish wall art all came straight out of his original 2008 baby nursery.

That’s the thing about classic decorating trends. If you wait long enough, eventually it all comes back in style. But my motto is decorate with what makes you happy, NOT what’s trendy. Just in case you were wondering. I really just don’t want y’all to think I was suddenly hopping on this vintage summer camp theme because it’s currently trending. Again.

This room, of course is THE perfect spot for the now-infamous owl lamp to have a permanent roost. He got a new non-ruffled shade and he’s settling into this room like he owns the place.

The $200 Log Cabin Bed from the Thrift Store

The star of the room is the huge log bed, and it is my favorite kind of furniture story. My husband stumbled upon this Gatlinburg-cabin-style log bed at our local thrift store for $200. Can you believe that steal of a deal? It fits the room perfectly with a queen mattress, and it instantly gave the whole space that lodge feeling you cannot get from anything sold in a big box store.

Yes, in case you’re wondering…I still need a bed skirt. Don’t judge me. It’s on the to-do list.

The bedding is a simple navy duvet over a down feather insert, plenty of pillows, and a Pendleton camp blanket with red/yellow/blue/green stripes, which is the single fastest way to make any room feel like summer camp. If you want a REAL wool Pendleton blanket, it’s an investment piece, but it’s also the kind of blanket your grandkids will fight over someday.

But…If you want to be like me, get on facebook marketplace and find someone reselling the Pendleton sherpa fleece blankets that Costco was selling a few years ago. Only a few folks will ever know the difference.

The DIY End Tables made from Old Wooden Windows

My husband built the end tables himself using old wooden windows many years ago. They’re one of my favorite DIY projects in the whole house, and if you want to try to recreate them for your house, I have a full tutorial here:

LINK: DIY End Table Furniture Plans using old Wooden Windows

The Curtains That Fooled Everyone

The curtains are a navy wool-look plaid from Amazon, and I mean it when I say they look and feel like real wool. They’re the exact same curtains we hung in the Harry Potter/ Ralph Lauren attic bunk room at my dad’s Airbnb, and they’ve held up beautifully there, so buying them again was the easiest decision in this room.

The 1971 Lay Lake Map

Now for the piece that makes this room genuinely one of a kind. While cleaning out a closet, we found an original map from 1971, with the entirety of Lay Lake mapped out exactly as it was back then. The same era this house was built. During that time, my father-in-law worked for Southern Company, and they owned Alabama Power. He brought this map to HIS father-in-law way back in the day, and now here it is.

We had it framed and gave it a place of honor on the wall. You can buy vintage-STYLE maps all day long, but you cannot buy the real map of your own lake, from your own family, found in your own closet. That’s the kind of thing this whole remodel is about.

Those are the parts that make you tear up when you think about them too hard.

The Eagle Scout Memorabilia Wall

My husband is an Eagle Scout, and this room finally gave him permission to bring out all the old Boy Scout memorabilia. Old badges, patches, and pieces from his scouting days are worked in throughout the room, and he has had entirely too much fun buying more stuff on Whatnot. If you or someone in your family scouted, dig that box out of the attic. It belongs on a wall, not in storage.

Three Generations of Trophy Fish

The fish. Oh, the fish. We hung every trophy-mounted fish in this room, and together they tell a family story:

• The huge crappie my husband’s grandfather caught in the 1970s
• The huge largemouth bass my father-in-law caught in the 1980s
• And my own largemouth bass, caught my senior year of high school in 1995

They’d been waiting in storage since we finished the renovations, and seeing them all together on one wall might be my favorite moment in the whole room.

This is the kind of vintage decor you cannot buy at the store.

This kind of decor has to be earned. One long, hot fishing trip at a time.

The Room Details– Paint Colors: Sherwin Williams Smoky Blue and Shoji White

The walls are a combination of two classic Sherwin-Williams paint colors:

• Smoky Blue (SW 7604) on the back accent wall. It’s a moody blue-gray that reads like a lake at dusk, and it makes all the warm wood and navy plaid accents in the room really shine.
• Shoji White (SW 7042) on the dark old wall paneling. This is a warm, creamy white that keeps the room from feeling like a cave without fighting the vintage pieces. We used it in most of the other rooms, so you’ll be seeing it a lot in future room reveals.

If you’re trying to recreate this look, that paint pairing is a classic shortcut that has never done me wrong. Deep smoky blue + warm white + rich wood tones. That’s pretty much the whole formula.

Vintage Summer Camp Bedroom Sources

• Wall paint: Sherwin-Williams Smoky Blue SW 7604
• Paneling paint: Sherwin-Williams Shoji White SW 7042
• Pendleton camp blanket with leather strap
• Navy wool-look plaid curtains
• Log cabin bed: thrifted, $200 (check local thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace for “log bed” or “cabin bed”)
• Window end tables: DIY, tutorial here DIY End Table Furniture Plans using old Wooden Windows
• Leather paintings, fishing lure lamp, moose pillow, pressed tin fish, owl lamp: collected over 20 years, originally from a Great North Woods nursery
• Framed 1971 Lay Lake map, Eagle Scout memorabilia, trophy fish: family pieces.. priceless