so far

before

Our bedroom had been neglected for far too long.  I was ready for change and my requirements were:

  • neutral colors
  • a pretty bed
  • drapes
  • masculine and feminine feel
  • places to sit
  • an 8 x 10 rug
  • surfaces to place books and tums and snoring medicine and my other old lady paraphernalia
  • better lighting
  • pay cash for everything

Neutral Backdrop


This is what the room looks like without any embellishments.  Actually, it looked like this until today when I grabbed the brocade shams from the playroom, blue chevron pillow from the downstairs sofa and a pretty throw from my office.  Photos look better with a little color in them.  The walls are Martha Stewart Flagstone, a nice gray color.  Our en suite bathroom has browns and grays and this room gets tons of light so a dark gray was a good choice for us.   From this point, I can add in yellow accents with a vase and a pillow and a throw, or some fun greens or a big graphic pillow shams in orange, I guess I don’t have to list every possible color combination, you get the idea, right?  I love that I can add in any color or pattern and instantly change the room.

Currently I don’t have anything covering the box spring.  Once I get a feel for what direction I’ll go for the accent fabrics and colors, I’ll add some fabric or a printed sheet that will offset all the white.

The Bed

 

If I could pick any bed, I would want something like this from Z Gallerie

Or this from Lindsay Harper’s apartment.

I had a yard sale back in October and made a good amount of cash to put towards a new bed.   But for whatever reason, I wanted to wait and see if we could work in what we had.  And what we had was a super sturdy 5 year old sleigh bed from Big Lots.  Not nice wood but not falling apart at all. Rats. {Do people still say “rats”?  My dad says it all the time so it sounds normal to me.}

The walls are gray so for contrast we painted the bed white.  My husband helped on this one, he encouraged me to try this bed and see and with my aversion to spending money, that was all I needed.  But, I told him if we were going to keep the sleigh, I wanted him to help me paint it.  He rolled, I brushed and it took about two hours using leftover paint we had from the dresser.  BEHR paint plus primer in Hushed White~it’s actually more yellowy than I would like for the bed, you can tell when it’s up against my super white sheets, but it’s not bothersome enough to paint it again.  If you want further instructions on how to paint your furniture, I’m not a professional, but I did read my friend Mandie’s ebook and learned all of her secrets.  It’s not the bed I wanted but, it was free and I like much it better than before.

Drapes

I agonized over drapes for a LONG time.  I love long drapes, I think they have magical powers to soften and transform a room from blah to cozy. I really wanted a neutral graphic print.  The drapes were the VERY first thing I looked for for this room.  Long before I knew what we were going to do with the room, I knew if i could find the right fabric everything could springboard off that.

I love this DwellStudio Gate print by Robert Allen. That would have added in some masculine feel.  However, we are renting this house and there are 4 windows in this room which means 8 panels that each need almost 3 yards of fabric. This fabric would have cost me over $1000. Just for the fabric. Eight panels at even $10 a yard fabric would have cost $240 just for fabric for me to mistreat. That was the most I was willing to spend but, as I looked around, I realized that finding $10 per yard discount fabric I like was difficult but I did find a few however, I could never find 24 YARDS of the fabric I liked.  At such an inexpensive price, the fabric was usually on sale or discontinued and every time I found something that would work, I was faced with not enough fabric on the bolt.  Plus, I knew I didn’t want to sew and the thought of paying $250 just so I could hang fabric pieces kind of bothered me.  Finally, I called off the search and decided to go with white panels.

I went to the least expensive store in town, Ollie’s, and bought 8 full sized flat sheets for $3.99 each.  And then I bought 4 rods from Home Depot for about $13.00 each.  I dressed 4 windows for less than $100.  I just realized that I accidentally put a queen sized sheet for the left panel of that window, see how it puddles on the floor? One day, maybe I’ll switch that out with the couple of extra full sized that I bought.

Masculine and Feminine


It’s my tendency to be overly girly.  I guess it comes naturally since you know, I’m a girl and all.  But, I wanted to make sure our room looked like it belonged to both a man and a woman.  Not the owner of hello kitty.

For us that meant no toile, no floral {ok so there are a few flowers on that throw but remember, that actually goes in my office, I just brought it in here so my photos wouldn’t look like black and whites} no pinks.  I decided to balance the white with wood.  We happened to find this clearance sunburst mirror back in October at Pier 1 for $80.  Sold.

Plus, we had this armiore in our room that is wooden and I wanted to balance the wood and white.  I thought I was going to witness the death of a 120 pound mover when they moved this solid wood armiore up our stair well and dropped it and it left huge gashes in the walls {didn’t damage the armiore one little bit though, solid wood and all}.  Those little boys got so mad at me telling me I packed too much stuff in it.  I made them open it once they got it into our room so I could prove it was empty.  All that to say this armiore is staying in our room until we move.  Try to ignore the pile of clothes and lamp and wall stuff. This room isn’t quite done yet and even if it was, my favorite hobby is piling clothes.

Places to Sit

One of the few requests that my husband has for our room is a place to sit.  I found this classy and slightly masculine chair at One Kings Lane {that’s my referral link thankyouverymuch}.  One Kings Lane is a website that has 72 hour sales posted every day from all sorts of great sources.  I’ve got a post coming up in the next week where I’ll explain how I use OKL so hold on for that.  But, just like any store, you need to be patient and wait for a great deal that works for you.  This chair was about $400~about half what it retails for.

My chair was a $35 thrift store find that I painted and distressed {lazy girl’s way to paint} last year.  I found the garden stool at Ollie’s for $25.  I had my eye on them for awhile and saw them one blogs and in high end shops, even One Kings Lane had them but they were all over $100.  Of course, I didn’t buy the $25 one when I saw it.  Lucky for me, my trusty mom found one for me at her local store.  Thanks Mom!

The Rug

Our entire house has wood floors which is absolutely wonderful and simultaneously absolutely cold on morning toes fresh from the bed.  We needed an 8 x 10 rug to go under the bed so we could step onto cush.  I think this rug fits the cush factor and the fun factor. It was $400 from One Kings Lane and it made the whole room come together.

Surfaces

We needed side tables.  Since we had long drapes, I wanted tables that were leggy so the drapes would show through under the top.  Plus, I know that we won’t be in this home forever so I wanted tables that I could use in other rooms later if I needed to.  I found these crescent tables at One Kings Lane for $170 each.

Lighting

The pair of lamps are from Hobby Lobby $100 each but of course, Hobby Lobby has a sale rotation with lamps 50% off about once a month so I got them for $50 each.  The extra large lantern commands attention.  You can’t tell from the photos but it’s the first thing you look at when you walk in to the room.   I had originally thought I would find an old chandelier and wrap twigs around it but when I saw this lantern at the Habitat ReStore for $30 I knew it would be a nice centerpiece for the room.

All I had to do was dust it off and hit it with a little spray paint.  I should probably adjust that chain a little bit.

Pay Cash

I just moved three paragraphs from this topic to a new post.  Does anyone really want to read me go on and on about why it’s not worth it to put furniture on a credit card?  We paid surprisingly little for this makeover. We used all cash and I had some referral credits from One King’s Lane that I put to good use. I’ll share more about how to use One King’s Lane later this week.

All in all, we LOVE our room.  And that was the overall goal.  It didn’t turn out anything like I had originally planned, it never does but the plan is just a guide, the goal is to like it.  Maybe one day I’ll figure out what I want to do with the tray ceiling but, I’m not in a hurry to make it happen.  We still want a bookshelf next to my husband’s chair and there’s one wall in this room that you are going to laugh at that I’ll show you very soon. If anyone is wondering, we have our dressers in our closet. I’ve got my eye on Etsy for the perfect graphic pillows in a fun color.  You’ll be the first to know when I find them.

I’m so happy to finally have a bedroom that I don’t dread walking into.  Creating a welcoming master bedroom is one of the best investments we’ve made.