Category Archives: bedrooms

05/11/12

Brainstorming our bedroom makeover

I mentioned in my post about our bedroom that I was hoping to sell our current dresser/nightstand and replace with something that fit the room a bit better. I am not sure when we’ll have the finances to do this, but it’s fun to brainstorm.

As a refresher, here are the pictures of our bedroom as it stands currently:
Looking into our bedroom
Nightstand, door, dresser
I want to get rid of the dresser/mirror, the nightstands on either side of our bed, the other nightstand, and probably get a headboard as well. I think a nice rug would complement our room well, and we definitely need to think about window coverings/new blinds. Those would be father in the future, of course.

After checking out all the dressers in Ikea, I think this is the one I want (the HEMNES 8-drawer dresser):

I also like the matching nightstand (the HEMNES chest with 2 drawers):

There is also a matching headboard that I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t have strong opinions on the subject. I’ll have to be creative about replacing the mirror, but Ikea has a lot of fun options.

I really like all these pieces in white, but I don’t know how well it would match our walls. They are a very, very light blue/gray color – they look white in pictures. I love their color, but it wouldn’t be enough contrast to white furniture. I have two options… One, paint the walls of the room to a darker color – perhaps the same blue/gray but darker? I don’t mind doing this, but it does add another cost to the room.

The other option is to get different color furniture. The HEMNES dresser and nightstand come in three other colors:

Unfortunately, the headboard only comes in white so I’d have to look for something else. I can’t decide which one I like best and will match our room. We have somewhat of a blue/tan/green theme going on, matching our quilt – I would probably continue with that color scheme.

I need to find something for between the closets and door. If we put a piece of furniture there, it needs to be narrow – I am always hitting my leg on the corner of the current nightstand. We also need an easily activated light, since the switch on the wall works the overhead fan. I was thinking a floor lamp, but at the same time I would really like to have some places in our room that are out of reach of little hands. I could put shelves on the wall over the dresser – on either side of the mirror perhaps? I still need to think through our options for this.

What ideas do you have?

03/24/12

Why yes, we do have a master bedroom!

You’ve probably noticed a shortage in pictures talking about our master bedroom. The truth is it’s the bedroom that is cleaned the least often and I’ve just not wanted to display that for the whole internet to see. :-) In fact, today when I finally tackled our room, I discovered screws and tools on the dresser from when we put together the furniture after moving in 2.5 years ago. Yeah….

So here is the only “before” picture I took:

Master bedroom

As you see, the bedroom was paneling painted white with red trim around the windows and doorway. There was also the lovely borderprint that matched the stuff in the living and dining room. The room was carpeted, and the inside of the closets were painted yellow.

Here’s an after shot, taken today (though 90% of the work we did was done in the first month of owning the house):
Our bedroom

Some of the things we did:
– Removed the borderprint.
– Painted the paneling a very light blueish color. It really doesn’t show up in pictures, but I love it in real life.
– Painted all the trim around windows & doors white, to match the rest of the house.
– Pulled up carpet to reveal gorgeous hardwood floors underneath. They’re in great shape because they’ve been covered by carpet for so long. We did get them refinished when we refinished all the floors before we moved in, but these didn’t need much to make them beautiful.
– Painted the inside of the closets white (as we did in all the other bedrooms). It makes SUCH a difference in my opinion.
– Installed a light switch because there wasn’t one.

From the same angle as the “before” picture.
Looking towards the closets - doors closed

Let’s face it, we never leave our closet doors closed. :-)
Looking towards the closets - doors open

Looking in the other direction…
Nightstand, door, dresser

Closet doors on the left, door to the hallway in the middle, and door to the bathroom on the right. We don’t use the door to the bathroom and keep it locked all the time.

Now that I’ve gotten all these pictures taken… I’m actually going to be selling our furniture pretty soon. It doesn’t fit well in our room, and we had to completely take the headboard & footboard off because it made the bed too long for the space. Here’s a picture of the headboard and footboard from a previous apartment – it matches the dresser and nightstand, which we bought all together. I’m still trying to figure out a good solution to our needs. The room is a bit difficult to arrange furniture because of the doors and HVAC vent on the floor. Also, while I LOVE the medium wood color of the current furniture, I’d like something that contrasts the floor a bit more. I haven’t decided anything yet… but these things are all what’s on my mind.

We also cut our grass in our backyard for the first time, and I’ll post pictures of that later! (It looks like an actual yard now!)

09/29/10

new look for the guest room

New bedspread

When we got our guest bed a year ago, I went to a local discount linen store to get curtains, bedskirt, bedspread, and pillow shams. I thought the bedspread especially was beautiful! I still think so. However, after a year it has *not* held up. The stitching in the quilt is coming undone, and raveling to the point of being impossible to fix. I’m disappointed, especially because this was a guest bed, and not something that was used with any frequency. (A lot of people think that my cats tore up the quilt with their claws, but I just wanted to mention that this isn’t true. Their claws have done their fair share of damage on things around our house, but this quilt isn’t one of them.)

I decided to get a new bedspread/quilt for the guest bed. Since the bedskirt and curtains are still fine, I wanted to match them. I like the look of a quilt because me using the room for my sewing projects. It kinda puts me in the mood.

I’m pretty happy with the new quilt. I feel like it has a fall feel, and looks as warm and inviting as the other quilt. I hope this one lasts much longer!

(Pictures of old quilt here.)

Guest room

07/27/10

Savannah’s room, updated

I posted some pictures of Savannah’s bedroom a while back. It didn’t change too much from when we moved in, except for the paint. At the time, the only thing we kept in her room was a changing table and her clothes. Now, we have a crib and she sleeps in there. (We keep most of the toys in the playroom downstairs.) Also, I organized her clothes last January and never took a picture! So here it is finally. :-)

Savannah's room
Savannah’s room. I really, really want a glider so I can rock her! I have been scouring Craigslist but have not been very satisfied with the prices.

Changing table
The changing table & dresser of sorts

Closet
Savannah’s closet. In January I got that bookshelf and that has been PERFECT! I really like having it. I also got some rubbermaid containers for her clothes that she’s outgrown. I put all the “outgrown” stuff on the top shelf of the closet.

Crib
Savannah’s crib (Ebony is demonstrating where Savannah sleeps)

01/27/10

accomplishment

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I feel such a sense of accomplishment! Our house is disorganized at best, and I have found it hard to summon the energy to tackle the mess. (It’s so overwhelming!) Savannah’s bedroom was no exception – it had become a storeroom for all things baby related, to the point where I simply just found a space on the floor for her clean clothes. Part of the problem was that her wardrobe has grown considerably, and I didn’t have a good system for the new clothes so really all the sizes were mixed together. I had a shoebox I was using for her too-small outfits, and I’m sure you can imagine how that was overflowing. :-)

I had been trying to figure out what would be a good solution to the disorganization, and I finally decided some large plastic bins for storage and a bookcase for the closet would do the trick. We got both yesterday and tonight I spent several hours cleaning her room.

The biggest challenge was getting the clothes organized enough that I could easily see what was there, and that her current size was the easiest to grab. I had no conception of what exactly her wardrobe consisted of. For example, a few weeks ago I went out and bought two packages of 6 month size onesies. Then tonight I discovered a whole pile I didn’t know I had! Included in the pile was a set of 5 that are now too small. She never even wore them. :-(

With the help of the bookcase, the clothes are much more accessible now. I also hung up as many as I could, and arranged them in size order – smallest to largest. The bookcase also houses a shelf for her books and a shelf for her toys. Everything is much neater and more accessible now!

I’m so excited about how it all looks. I would take photographs but I’m not quite done. I still want to hang a few pictures, and I’d love to get the crib set up. (It’s in pieces right now.) We don’t have a mattress for it, which is why I haven’t set it up yet. I also am not sure what to do with the stuffed animals – perhaps a net thing hanging from the wall? Overall, I am really happy with the improvement!

Now if I can only accomplish the same in other rooms…

11/12/09

Savannah’s bedroom

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

We picked the smallest of the three bedrooms to be Savannah’s room. Right now, all we do is change diapers and keep her clothes there. When she’s sleeping through the night, I’ll probably have her sleep there too. My parents have a crib for her at their house in Orlando; as soon as we figure out how to get it up here we’ll put that in the room too. I would love to get a rocking chair or glider, but it works as it is right now.

This is the only “before” picture I have of Savannah’s room. It basically shows you the old paint color. Painting the room is pretty much the only thing we did.
Smallest bedroom

What her bedroom looks like now:
Savannah's room

I picked out a pale purple color. I love the result! You can’t really see the color all the well in the picture, because I took it as the light outside was fading.

The changing area and dresser

We got the dresser at a local secondhand store and I’m really happy with it. It holds her blankets, clothes, shoes, socks, bibs, etc. You can see all her cloth diapers on top of the dresser – aren’t they so pretty? :-) To the left is her hamper, and to the right is where we put the dirty diapers. Oh, and we needed a surface to put the lamp so we stuck it on one of our stools. We don’t have a breakfast bar anymore, so we really don’t need stools. However, they work great as small tables for lamps!

I hung all her clothes that weren’t onesies. Aren’t they cute?
All the pink clothes in Savannah's closet!

On the other side of the room from the dresser is a pack & play and a camping chair. They are leftover from when we were working on the house. This room was the first one that we finished, so I used to sit here and nurse her, and put her to sleep in the pack & play. I don’t really spend any time here anymore, but perhaps when I get a rocking chair or glider I’ll find myself in here more!

Beth gave me an awesome baby gift:
Gift for Savannah

Didn’t she do such a great job? I love it! I can’t wait to hang it. The paneling is SO hard to nail into. (All the bedrooms have paneling – the guest room was the only one that wasn’t already painted when we moved in.) So, once I decide where to put it, I better be VERY sure. :-) I haven’t gotten around to hanging pictures yet. Someday, someday…

Those are all the pictures I’ve taken so far. Our bedroom needs a bit more organizing, and I’ll hopefully get to that sometime soon. Then there’s the bathroom, the dining room, and the den… The den will probably not be done until next spring or summer, so you’ll have to be patient for that. It doesn’t look any different than when we moved in except that it doesn’t have carpet and it’s filled with boxes. :-)

11/9/09

get ready to be amazed!

Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

Since we had guests this weekend (my in-laws came to visit – Grandma and Grandpa!), I took advantage of the guest room being clean to take a picture! While the kitchen may have had the most work done to it, the guest room probably looks the most different.

First, the stairs to go to the top level of our split-level home (before, after):
Stairs to go up to the bedroomsThe stairs

The before picture for the guest room:
2nd bedroom

And now, how the guest room looks today… Are you ready? Here it is!
The guest room

What a difference a bit of paint made!!

The dark paneling made the room feel even smaller, so I picked a nice very light blueish color to cover the walls. It’s the same color that we painted our bedroom as well. We also pulled up the carpet, and of course the hardwood underneath was refinished at the same time as the rest of the house. It looks like a different room now!

We had the headboard already (it was mine from before we got married), so we bought a new mattress in anticipation of many wonderful guests.

Window, sewing machine

Closets in the guest room

In addition to a guest room, this will also be a craft/sewing room. You can see my sewing machine set up next to the bed. In the closet is a dresser filled with all my craft supplies. I am looking forward to having a bit more space to spread out than in my last apartment!

We still haven’t unpacked everything that will reside this room. Namely, the books that will go in that bookcase are still in boxes. Also, one of the closets is full of pictures that will be hung on the walls as soon as I get organized and figure out where exactly I want them. Once that closet is empty, we’ll fill it with miscellaneous boxes that need a home.

So now that you see what a nice guest room we have, you have no excuse not to come and visit us!

I have pictures of Savannah’s room which I’ll put in another post. Our room desperately needs to be cleaned and it still needs to be unpacked/organized so once that is done I will take a picture and post it. Our bathroom did not change much, but I’ll try to get a picture later. That’s it for the upstairs. Stay tuned. :-)