Don’t worry, I’m not talking about 50 Shades of Grey stuff here – get your mind out of the gutter. What I am talking about is a bedroom that looks like it belongs to adults instead of college kids.
Before we get into any progress pictures -(we’re not definitely not into “after” territory yet), let’s look at the before. Prepare yourselves for some ugly:
Pretty swanky, eh? Our bedroom was what I described as “Senior year dorm chic.” You know, when you go off to college you buy all new stuff to deck out your dorm room and make it look cute or edgy or artsy or whatever. When you go back for your sophomore year, you still have most of that but by then a pillow case has gone missing, miscellaneous decorations have been broken or torn, and you’re more worried about pulling your GPA back up and losing those freshman 15 than decorating your room. It’s still decently well put together but less matchy-matchy. Junior year follows the same formula but now your sheets don’t match, your towels are faded, and shot glasses are your tchotchkes of choice. Then, senior year hits and you end up between the stuff you bought as an eager freshman, the cheap crap you bought to replace the items you lost, and the brand new stuff you’re starting to accumulate to carry on to your first real apartment after graduation. It’s mixing old with new in the least attractive way possible.
This is what we’re working with now:
I can’t even tell you how much easier it is to relax in here. We are far from finished – if this was a marathon we’d be around Mile 4 (Don’t mind me, I just ran for 10 minutes straight without dying so I’m basically a pro now). One of the best things we did in here was remove the ceiling fan. I love having a ceiling fan in the bedroom but this one was so low and the placement was a little awkward.
I want to point out that I am not a fan of stark white walls at all; not even a little bit. That being said, I was having the hardest time picking a color. It’s like the yellow was fogging my brain and now that it’s a blank slate, I’m kind of digging it. You can still see the old paint color right below the ceiling but we’ll be adding crown molding eventually so it’ll be hidden. The jury is still out on whether we’ll pick a color or leave the walls white. Our room is pretty large and add that to the ladder tango I was doing to deal with the vaulted ceilings and the result was a pain in my butt. Actually, the pain was more in my hands, my neck, and my back but you know what I mean. It took right around 4 hours to do the first coat so I made Kyle help for the 2nd coat and it went a little bit faster.
We have a closet project in the works right now, and we knew this little closet wouldn’t actually be used for clothes so we’re turning it into a nook instead. It was easy enough to take the doors and track down but taking the shelf brackets off was a little bit of work. Not sure if we’re going to do shelves or artwork above the TV and we still need to paint the closet but I’m not sure if I want to do it white or use an accent color…or maybe even do something fun like a pattern? What do you guys think? That TV will eventually be replaced with a larger one, by the way. Santa has been talking about upgrading the one in our living room this year and if that happens, the living room TV will move here and this little guy will move out to the garage – we love having football/baseball on while we work.
The comforter is from World Market and had been freshly trampled on by Barley when I took these pictures. The sheets/blanket that you can’t see are from Target (Nate Berkus collection) and need to be replaced already – that’s the issue when you have a 65lb beast with sharp claws that likes to run laps across your bed. We’re still collecting pillows but I’m having a hard time finding exactly what I want – I don’t really like these yellow ones in here but for now they stay. The headboard was a project we tackled with some fabric from Jo-Ann, a Target mattress topper, and some plywood – I’ll post a tutorial soon but it’s not exactly how I wanted it. Not bad for my first attempt, though.
The lamps are also from Target and you can’t actually see them because my photography skills are so awesome. Kyle built the nightstands which I mentioned recently (tutorial coming soon for those, too!). These nightstands are currently being fixed from our stain mishap (you can see a sneak peek of the plan above) but we really needed them so that’s on hold. Eventually, we’ll move them to the lounge downstairs because we really want some nice natural wood pieces in here to warm it up a bit. We’ve already come up with plans for the new nightstands.
I think the room has come a long way already but we still have plenty to do including but not necessarily limited to:
-Add crown moulding and new baseboards
-New doors
-Closet nook – Paint? Shelves? Art?
-New curtain rod/blackout curtains
-Pillows!
-Seating area between the windows and doors
-Remove/replace bench under windows. The bench we have now is too small but not sure if we’ll want something there once the seating area is finished
-Build bench for the foot of the bed
-Do something about that lovely purple and green boxspring
-Raise bed
-New sheets
-Figure out what to do on the long blank wall on the other side of the bed
-Figure out what to do with the dog kennel and bed
The progress is slow but at least there is progress. I’ll take it.
Leave a Reply