The Story of a Room

I get on decorating kicks every once and a while, and when I get going I am a little bit obsessed. My poor husband, I seriously bore him to death with "decorating talk". He's a good sport though, bless his little heart.

My most recent obsession has been our master bedroom. This room has come a loooong way. Lets do a little recap here.

This is what our room looked like when we bought our house almost 3 years ago:

Bleh. And yes, that is a tiny little Avery on our bed, we had green walls and a green bed for about a year. The walls were painted green by the previous owner, and we somehow already had that ghastly green bedding. 

A lot too much green going on there. And those cabinets! I wanted to rip them out when we 1st moved in, but then I quickly realized how much we desperately needed every square inch of storage those beastly cabinets offered. Mid-Century home problems.

So we grew weary of the green everywhere theme and decided to paint it this color:

Instant painters remorse. I hated it the second we finished. It made everything look dingy and it made those cabinets stand out even more. Bleh again. 

So about 6 months too long, later, I painted it this color (notice I said I, I decided to leave Steve out of the paint picking process and painted while he was at work so he would be surprised when he got home. Paint color #3:

This one was a better option than the blue. A yellow that I thought would be softer, but wasn't. Again I had severe painter's remorse. But at least by this point we ditched that green K-Mart comforter for a white Ikea duvet. Baby steps.
We lived in our yellow ugly room for a year and a half. Last month I changed everything. I was sick and tired of hating being in our room. I got to busy scheming and stuff and here is how she looks now:

Quite the difference, right? Some obvious changes: I painted those ghastly brown cabinets the same color as our trim. Holy brightness. I actually like my built in cabinets now. It was a pain, pain, pain to do but I am so glad I finally painted them.
I also painted the walls Benjamin Moore Intense White, which is a really soft gray color. I love it. No painters remorse...it only took the 3rd try.

I also reupholstered our head board, it was a gross faux leather that I cannot believe I actually picked out 4 years ago. Live and learn. Anyway, not it is a lovely cream linen with buttons, so much better.
The bedding. Oh kantha quilt, how I love thee. I bought the quilt from Ebay. It came straight from India. It is called a Kantha Quilt, and it is made out of used sari's and hand quilted, like a lot of hand quilting and piecing together. I love it. Steve was worried that it would smell like curry. Seriously, that was his biggest concern, not the flowers, the possibly curry smell. (It didn't smell by the way). Got it for $45. The black and white pillow you probably recognize from Ikea. Yay, Ikea!
Eventually I want books to like the entire area underneath that window, but it will take some time to collect all those.
I also got rid of my bedskirt. I hate bedskirts. They are always shifting in the wrong place and just generally annoying. So I upholstered my box spring in the same fabric as my headboard to create some uniformity. I love how it turned out.

Hooray for clean lines!
I also had this area to deal with, my office area since Heidi's entrance in our home kicked our office into our room. Here is the desk before:

Really not that bad but not pictured is the cheapest black computer chair that you can buy from Walmart. A little too traditional for me. So I sold the above desk for $130 on craigslist and opted for something a little more cheery and modern. So I turned to trusty Ikea and built a custom table for $86.

Much cleaner look. Oh and I found that amazing chair at Mesa Thrift Store for $10. I still swoon every time I look at it.

I also got rid of that black tall dresser we had in there. That was our 1st piece of furniture we bought together. We even painted it together when we were engaged. But I was over it. So I sold it on CL for $65. It took a whopping 20 minutes to sell and I had about 6 more people wanting it. Who knew those dressers were in such demand?

Again, CL came through for me and I found this dresser for $50. I loved the mid-century vibe it adds to the room, and I also love how it makes our room look bigger because it is shorter than our black dresser. More wall space, yay. I painted it a nice deep blue (it looks sort of bright in this picture, but it really is a nice deep blue, promise).

I still have a few more things I want to do, like a hang a on the window behind the bed, maybe paint the lampshade on the dresser a cool design, I definitely want to add a vintage settee underneath the window so I am on the prowl for one of those, and maybe get a nice huge rug for under the bed. But the rug would be way down the road. Do you know how much rugs are?? Sheesh.
Speaking of money, after selling stuff and using that money to put back into the room the grand total came to $167.00. (Includes paint, primer, sealing wax, polycylic, fabric, pillows, wall art, everything is included).
Anyway, so there you have it, the story of our bedroom. A happy ending.

Living Room Redo

A couple of months ago I woke up one day and decided I hated my living room. So I changed it. The end. And I am really happy with the end result. We pretty much changed everything but the carpet and my ever-so-trusty-white-couch. Here is how it looked for a couple of years....

Coordinated, but dark. I feel like that green chair and ottoman sucked all the light right into their deep cushions. So the first step to a new living room was to sell that bad boy on craigslist! I knew I wanted a much brighter room, that was a lot more interesting. More colors, textures, patterns, etc.

Here is the make-over...

This project was proof to me that if you don't like something about your house, change it! (within means of course :)) If money is the hold-up, get creative! This room only cost around $300. That's paint (2.5 gallons to be exact), a brand new chair (the gray one) from Ikea, curtains ($15 at the amazing Ikea),  the chair I reupholstered (blue and white chair), new ottoman ($25 find on craigslist), fabric for said ottoman ($2.50 coverlet find at goodwill), paintings (also thrifted), fabric for pillows, knickknacks (again, thrifted). Can you tell I like thrift stores? I also had a garage sale where I literally almost sold ALL of my old decorations. That helped a ton to front the cost. 

Moral of the story: be brave, and get creative, and don't be afraid of a white couch. (Bleach is your friend)

***Side note: My living room is never really this clean. Don't believe this lie of cleanliness I have presented to you. I most definitely threw all of the "kid stuff" in my kitchen for the 5 minutes I took these pictures. Baby swings, bumbos, play-mats, play-tents, and about a million toys my toddler drags from room to room were not really adding to my funkshway.

***Side note again: Steve seems to think this is how our living room will be forever now. I don't have the heart to tell him I will probably get the itch to change it again in a couple months years.

Nursery Reveal

After months of painting, reupholstering, thrifting, and sewing (lots of sewing) I am relieved to say I am finally done with the new nursery for little Heidi. I have three weeks left to go in this pregnancy, so now I can focus on the little things like washing all of Avery's stains out of the carseat cover, etc...

Anyway, here is what Heidi's room looked like before. I am a little embarrassed to even post this picture because this room was such a disaster. I promise it didn't always look like this, for whatever reason I snapped this picture on a particularly horrible, no good, messy day.

And here is what the dear ol' room looks like now.....

Isn't it lovely? I seriously just like sitting in this room and looking at it throughout the day. I have never decorated a room that I was this pleased with. I did it fairly cheaply too, with the help of craigslist (selling off stuff then used the money to buy new things), Ikea, Goodwill, and yardsales.
The chair I got from Goodwill for $10. It used to look like this....

Nice pink right? It was actually in really good condition, I almost felt it a shame to tear off all that clean fabric, but alas, mauve velvet would not do in my room.

The walls are painted Morning Sun, by Sherwin Williams. It is the perfect yellow, I swear. 

The fabric for the quilt, sheet, cribskirt, and changing pad I got from Sprightly Fabrics  on sale for $6.20/yard. Steal. It comes from Stitch Studios for Riley Blake, and the collection is called Marguerite. I love fabric. 

The chevron fabric came the the lovely Hobby Lobby.

The crib, sheepskin rug, curtains, lamp, and clock came from Ikea. Have I mentioned how much I hate/love Ikea? Well I do - we have an interesting relationship.

I made the big letter "H", well hobby lobby made the "H", I just hot glued Jute to it. Literally took me 6 hours to get all the Jute on there. Who knew? I already had the big frame, just painted it white. 

I got the vintage girls that hang above the changing table at a yardsale, along with the pot underneath the lamp and clock.

I already had the dresser/changing table from Avery's room - which I totally splurged on one day while "browsing" at Granny's Attic in Payson. Do not go in there an expect to leave empty handed, just a warning.

And I think one of my favorite last minute additions is the "Hush little Baby (no, seriously.)" picture. Thanks someone on Pinterest/Etsy.

So there you have it. A room gone from gross-chaos, to tranquil-sweetness. It is all ready for little Heidi; maybe she should take that as a hint to come this week. Wishful thinking, I know.