Master Bedroom (In Progress)

The master bedroom is finally unpacked and put away, for the most part.

Our Malm 3-drawer dressers that we were using as nightstands were wayyyyy too big for the space, so we replaced them with Ikea Rast tables. Sadly, I already had a pair of Rasts, but they did not survive the Big Purge (*gnashing teeth*), but whatever.  I have been stalking craigslist for a pair of nightstands, but I wanted something simple with clean lines, like a midcentury nightstand.  I find craigslist here to be terrible--put the word "midcentury" on your craigslist ad and charge $1000!  I didn't want to put out that kind of money for new or vintage.  So Rast it is.

I painted the Rast drawerfronts with some of the leftover paint from the baseboards (Dunn Edwards in Whisper semigloss), and added the hardware that I took off the last pair of Rasts I owned. I have not gotten around to staining the outer case of the Rast, but I am liking the lightness of the unfinished wood and may keep it that way.

There isn't much in the room--just the bed, nightstands and a new craigslist dresser.  (Our old dresser was painted purple and put in Princess's bedroom.)

You can see that the wall behind the dresser does not go all the way to the ceiling.  I do not like that.  Behind that wall is the master bathroom area.  Don't worry, the potty has its own little room with a door, but really, the entire space is very inefficiently utilized. (No pictures, that space is still home to piles of unpacked but homeless stuff.)  I have big plans to redo that entire space, add an upstairs laundry room and build better closets.....but like everything else it will have to wait till we save up some pennies.  Until then, weird half wall and shiny brass mirrored doors will be staying.

I have plans for this room (new flooring, roman shades, new furniture, light fixture, knocking down walls in the bathroom, etc), but for the moment, I'm loving how spacious and uncluttered this space is.  I love the navy blue walls, and how well the duvet works with the navy.  Living large, peeps.

Oh! One last sneakity peek at the hallway looking into the bedroom, painted fresh white and with black trim:

I cannot wait to paint all the doors and the banister black.

Have a lovely weekend, peeps.

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cluttered or zen: frames vs corkboard

I've been contemplating my decorating style lately.  I'd say that my style in previous houses could be described as....hmm, lets go with "maximalist" instead of the perhaps more accurate "cluttered", shall we? I think my taste may be changing.  Since painting this house a nice fresh white....I don't want to put any holes in the walls.  I don't want to cram too much furniture into my rooms.  I want to keep this clean, spacious vibe that we have going on.

This has kind of put a damper on a few projects I have been planning for years. For the longest time I have wanted this gallery of pictures, but now I feel like it might be too much.  (But I still love this picture! Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I cant decide.)

image via Rachel Hazelton Interior Design   

In our last house I put up a gallery wall around the tv, comprised mostly of the children's art.

Princess, who created the majority of the art hung in that wall, keeps asking me when I am going to put up all her framed art in our new house.  I have, in truth, been procrastinating on that particular project.  Not because I don't want her art on the walls, but because there is SO MUCH OF IT.  Like, a hundred million gazillion pictures.  Princess creates in a week more art than Peter and Greg have created in the last two years.

Not only is Princess prolific, but I LOVE her artwork--she has fabulous composition and use of color.  The kids really enjoy having their artwork displayed prominently, so it is also important to me that we have a special place specifically for their artwork.

I am contemplating putting up a large corkboard over the half bookshelves in the family room.

When I say "large corkboard" I am thinking of taking up the entire upper space with a framed corkboard, painted the same white as the wall.  Like this picture from HGTV Magazine, which I took in Barnes and Noble and cannot find online.

This white framed corkboard seems very minimalist, and I notice that there are only about a dozen very vibrant pictures on the wall.  I am afraid that we will have 400 very vibrant pictures on our corkboard, which might give it a different feel than this picture.

My fear is that regardless of whether I put up one enormous corkboard with 400 pictures, or a couple dozen framed pictures in a gallery wall, that space will look maximalist cluttered.  Since I want the kids to have a display space for their artwork (not relegated to the garage, and there are no "out of the way" corners to be had here), this is pretty much the spot.

Corkboard
- allows for frequent and easy rotation of new artwork.
- would be good for Princess's massive collection of 5x5 pieces of paper she brings home from school
-  I'd have to build it, since I don't have anything that size.
- May get overloaded and look more clutter-y.

Frames:
- I have an enormous number of black frames (I pick them up whenever I see them on sale under $5.)
- I do not have any 5x5 frames for Princess's 5x5 pieces that come home from school.
- Would look more like an intentional gallery wall and presumably less clutter-y than the corkboard.

Discuss, please.  

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instruction booklets, new buffet

A sign that you have too much Ikea furniture in your house? Your children start drawing instruction booklets.

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I bought a buffet off craigslist for the dining room.  I'll paint it a pretty color....eventually.  I can't seem to make up my mind on a color.  (Probably navy blue. When I get a free moment. Which means the mirror also needs to be painted a different color. )

I like the buffet in the corner, and the spacious feeling of the blank wall on the left, without a bookshelf wall.
 

Which has me thinking maybe I skip the bookshelf wall on the left and just hang an enormous blown-up photo of the Italy picture, assuming I can get the picture blown up (that picture is giving me issues).

This back-ing and forth-ing probably means I should just live with it as is for a while before making any decisions.

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bookcase possibilities: Billy vs. Vittsjo

Before moving in I posted a mood board for the dining room:

Unfortunately, when I put the console in the dining room it emphasized how leggy all the furniture in the dining room is. All the furniture is going to get up and walk away:

So that console moved into the playroom behind the sofa.  All that remains is the dining table and chairs.  (Also, the orange trellis curtains are not in that room, and blowing up the picture of Italy is giving me problems, and pretty much nothing from that mood board worked out.)

On the left I am thinking of putting a wall of bookcases.  Ikea is the obvious choice--I already have two currently unused white Billy bookcases out in the garage, so two more would be the inexpensive way to cover the wall.  I am picturing something like this fabulous wall of bookshelves that Centsational Girl built:

image via Centsational Girl

The other option is the Vittsjo open shelves.  Three units would fit comfortably in the space, and it can be painted a bright color.  I am thinking of something along these lines:

image via BHG

(Interestingly enough, Centsational Girl also used the Vittsjo in another project.)

I love the yellow shelving look--so bright! So cheerful! But....the Billy wall is less than half the price of the Vittsjo, seeing as I already have a few in the garage.

Do you like the open shelving like the Vittsjo, or do you prefer being able to customize the back of the Billy with a pretty paper or paint color?  

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the eat-in area

Right off our kitchen is our family room.  At the end nearest the kitchen is the area we use as our casual eat-in dining space.  (We have a formal dining room on the other side of the kitchen.)

When we bought the house, this family room/dining space was painted a hideously ugly dark sage green, with a tuscan-style-ish chandelier.

Since the formal dining room lacked a light fixture, we moved the tuscan wrought iron ugliness to the formal dining room, and installed a sputnik style chandelier in the eat-in area.  We painted the walls and ceiling Dunn Edwards Whisper.  We also hung our splatter painting that the kids made last year for Mother's Day.

Remember the round table that we couldn't seem to get rid of in the Big Purge?  Lucky for us that no one else wanted it.  It is beat up, but it is the perfect size and shape for this space.  And since it is so dinged I do not particularly care if the kids bang it up even more.  (Lying, I kind of do care, but I have realistic expectations that it will be banged up worse by the time we are done with it.)

We also added the trailer park pleather chairs. They are wipeable and comfy and they swivel. (Children have already done the spin-around-so-fast-you-fly-off-and-get-hurt thing.)  The tolix chairs are in the formal dining room.

It is not in my budget right now to buy a rug for the dining space, but since we were afraid of the floors getting scratched, we added tennis balls to the feet.  I'll be honest, although I like the look of a rug under a dining table, my kids put way too much food on the floor for a rug to be practical for us.  Our last place was carpeted in the dining area and I hated vacuuming that area every. single. night. So I'm perfectly happy with plain wood floors and tennis balls.

Lastly, I hung our Ikea Stockholm Blad blue curtains from our previous dining room.  I hung the curtains two inches below the ceiling, which means that they are currently floodwaters at about six inches above the floor.  I have plans to lengthen them with some navy fabric, but haven't gotten to it yet.

My crappy pictures do not do this room justice--I'm totally in love with this space. 

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sneak peeks at the Master bedroom and Princess room

I have a gazillion little things to share with you, but I also have really terrible photographs. My camera is having some issues (like the autofocus won't work and the camera just shuts off by itself intermittently and won't take pictures, etc), so please bear with me while I learn how to manually focus my camera (and shut it off and on four hundred times to try and get it to take pictures again).  

What should we look at first?  How about some pictures of my master bedroom.  Remember the beautiful beige it was before?

We painted it Benjamin Moore's Evening Sky, which I am completely in love with.

You might recall that I was concerned that the window embrasure took up too much wall space so that I would not be able to hang my headboard, so I had the drywall guy build in part of the window seat, so that the wall ends right at the window, instead of a foot outside. 

Because I have never been to design school and spatial orientation is not my thing I did not realize that this would block the view of the window and make it look closed in and El Stupido.  Whatever, live and learn, its my stupid mistake and I'm stuck with it for a while.  I can always demo the part we just built but since I just paid for it I will live with it for now.  

Its still a nice window seat.

I especially love the view of my room from the hallway. 

I could swear that I had taken a picture of the hallway as it looks today--all painted white with black trim--but apparently not.  

I have not yet gotten the master bedroom under control (piles and piles and piles of things and the nightside tables are too big so one moved downstairs and nothing is put away), but I pulled out one of the old duvets that I ripped apart (sigh) and I think it looks super awesomely lovely in this space. 

There's also this going on in the Princess's room:

I LOVE how this dresser came out.  I painted it with Benjamin Moore's Your Majesty, which seemed fitting for a princess's dresser.  

I'm not sure if the rug is staying--there's kind of a lot going on in that room and it may be one pattern too many.  I hope to put up the castle decal next weekend.  I also have some fun butterflies for the canopy, although they have yet to show up in the sea of unpacked boxes.  

Little by little, folks.

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small, cozy space vs the cavernous room with no furniture

One of the problems with purging half your furniture and then buying a bigger new house is that you might end up with a room like this:

There is a sofa and a side table in the living room.  And that's about it.  (This lovely blank canvas is the room you walk into when you open the front door.  Welcome to my zen abode, and please seat yourself on a tatami mat.)  It is not currently in my budget (nor will it be for a while) to furnish this room.

I thought that this room would serve as the playroom for a while. You can see the play kitchen on the right side of the picture, and the rest of the toys are on the opposite wall.  All the toys are sort of in the middle of the room, and then there is a step up into the dining room.

The only problem with this room acting as the playroom is that the kids have zero desire to play in here.  "The stripe rug is SO ITCHY, MOM."  I removed the stripe rug, but to no avail.  The kids gravitate towards the furnished family room on the other side of the house, dragging their toys with them.

I think that the room probably feels a bit cavernous and empty to them.  It is a pretty big space, especially without furniture. Plus, my kids like to hide in closets and make tents under chairs--they like small, enclosed spaces.  Today I opened the pantry to find Princess and an orphanage of dollies playing on the floor.  "What are you doing in here?"  "I live in here."

As she has taken up residence in a closet that is under the stairs, we are expecting her admittance letter to Hogwarts in a few years.

Which brings me to the furnished, cozy family room.  It is not finished or decorated, but it does have a soft rug and furniture.  The day we moved in I had two bookshelves set up at the end of the room (I don't have a full picture, but you can see part of it.)

These were the shelves that had our decor items like ginger jars and thingamabobs in the last house. But, the more I thought about it, I wanted two things in that space that the decor-filled shelves would not provide.  First, I wanted the childrens books in the family room, and the other bookshelves in the room are already full.  Second, I wanted a place to hang the kids' art that wasn't in a hallway, and if we used low bookshelves it was a perfect spot.  I want this house to reflect how we live, not how decor looks pretty.  The decor needs to serve us, not the other way around.

So the decor shelves moved out to the garage (as did the decor, it remains for the moment in boxes in the garage), and two low bookshelves moved in.  I have plans for another Ikea narrow bookshelf between the two that will hold crayons and coloring books.

But!  Speaking of decor serving us, not the other way around...since my kids are bringing all the toys in here anyways.....I could move the toys into that corner, instead of the books.

Problems: where do the books go? I greatly miss the landing at the top of the stairs in the old house, where all these books lived in the last house.

Furniture placement and spatial arrangements are not one of my many skills. I generally get there in the end, but it can take me a year or more of living in a place before figuring out a good furniture arrangement.  I am sad that I am not one of the "here's my fully completed beautiful room with professionally taken photographs" kind of girl, but you will all have to suffer through being my sounding board for ideas.

What would you do?  Keep in mind you have no money to buy furniture.  (You might have the budget for a large teepee in the living room, that would be a fun cozy space, yes?)

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