In our old house, I left this room unfinished for a good 3 years because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it. Once we moved to our new house, I essentially replicated the look because I loved it so much. As I've mentioned in previous posts, you need to find that one piece that you love and then build around it. For this room, the item I found first were the curtains. I saw this idea in a magazine and decided I needed to recreate it. I really wanted something different than the usual window treatments and liked the idea of accenting the tall ceilings. I special ordered the ties for it off of a small online business. The fabric was a discounted gauzy fabric from online. The curtains themselves were actually quite easy to make and because they pooled on the floor, I didn't have to worry about their exact length or adding weights.
The dresser in our room is an old dining room buffet that I purchased from Craigslist. It is scratched up and could use some TLC, but I love the coloring of it, so for now I'm going to leave it as is. In our old house, I had a little entryway where I put an old secretary's desk that I found on Craigslist. In the new house, I ended up using the table as a place to hold our DVR.
On one wall, I decided to create a sort of collage rather than pick one or two large pieces to fill the space. This idea proved to be much more economical. I had many of the picture frames already in my basement, then found the photos for free online and printed them off inexpensively through Shutterfly.
Over our dresser in the new house I ended up putting the big mirror that used to hang over the fireplace in the old house. I haven't hung a mirror in the bedroom in a long time because Feng Shui rules would say that it is a big no-no. But I had the extra mirror and a space to fill that I was unsure of, so this just made sense. I don't regret it at all. I feel like it gave the room a more open feel to it and added brightness in a room where there is only one window.
A new idea that I tried in this house was to put curtains on the wall next to the bed. I had several extra panels because we had more windows in our old bedroom. I really wasn't sure of how this would turn out and whether it would look goofy, but I really love how it filled the space.
The last piece of the puzzle was the bed. In our old house, I had purchased an inexpensive cream colored microfiber headboard from Walmart in a moment of panic before one of the babies was born. I had big dreams for a big, cool bed like you see in the Pottery Barn and Ballard Designs catalogs, but it just wasn't in the budget at that time. The headboard was meant to be a short-term fix. We ended up sticking with it for a good 3 or so years as we kept moving the new bed down on the priority list and things like diapers moved up (sigh...sacrifices;)). The headboard was pretty and functional, but with hard lines that were too contemporary for my styling. So I came across a busted up cherry sleigh bed on a yard sale site for $50 and grabbed it, much to my husband's dismay. It was a king-sized bed and we needed a California king, so my husband had to cut the side rails and extend them by about 4 inches. I then repainted the bed with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old Ochre, with a slight distressing, clear wax and dark wax wash. The frame ended up being a bit too wide, but is only really noticeable to me. The other thing I didn't like about it was that the headboard is the same height as the foot board. I lowered the shelf overhead to help balance this out. Not EXACTLY what I wanted, but overall I am pleased with how it turned out and the fact that I was able to do it for $0 by the time I sold my old headboard on a yard sale site. I think when you are decorating on a tight budget you have to just accept the fact that things won't always turn out exactly how you would like them to and you need to be okay with that, otherwise you will just get frustrated.
The wall color paint is one of the most important parts. I chose Behr Jamaica Bay and then lightened it by about 50%. I LOVE, LOVE this color. Whenever I am in my room there is a calming feel and I am reminded of the Caribbean. My perfect sanctuary for enjoying a glass of wine and some reality tv;)
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