I'm keeping it really real here -- this is exactly what the room looks like today, clutter and all. It's sheet changing day, so it's extra lovely right now, but in general, it's just a whole mess of UGH, you know? There are a few elements I am happy with, starting with the wall color.
Quick detour re: wall colors. We have discovered through revealing paint layers during the course of renovating that the previous owner of the house had absolutely zero taste whatsoever. The whole freaking house must have looked like a box of primary color crayons. Obviously when he hired a realtor, the first piece of business was to make the house presentable, so he had the place painted top to bottom in the most bland shade of decorator white ever mixed. The only rooms with color were the kitchen and bathrooms, which were a lovely shade I like to call "Govern-mint Institution Green." Oh, and the powder room? That was a lovely shade of electric peach. He also re-carpeted the whole place with the cheapest beige carpet ever made, which has stretched to become all wavy, and comes complete with padding so thin that we frequently step straight through onto the tack strips. I curse the cheap bastard on the regular as you might imagine.
Tangent aside, I still really love the wall color. I was so delighted to be rid of the bland beige that was swallowing the whole room, and I love how crisp the blue is with the white ceiling. I also loved how the blue made the photos above the bed pop. I bought them when I lived in Chicago, back when I was free to accessorize with pink (see also the pretty lamp on the dresser). We needed some decent sized art for over the bed, so we stuck these up there as place holders. However, once the room was painted, we were stunned to discover that they looked worlds better. We're super lazy and have VERY different taste in art, so they got to stay. The bedside lamps were the most recent addition, and I really love them too. They free up so much nightstand space, and even better, where the ceiling in the room is so high, the lamps help to ground the bed.
Other than that, though, the most I can muster for this room is a big ol' MEH. The furniture is the ubiquitous Ikea Hemnes stuff, but it is serving its purpose cheaply until someday when we can figure out what we actually want. The quilt, which totally clashes with everything, was from back in the pre-curtain days of beige walls, but was called back into service when I sent off the duvet cover I love to be made into a coverlet. I hate how messy duvets are, but loved the fabric; it's the Crate and Barrel "Claire" pattern. I just wanted to separate the top and bottom of the duvet and lightly quilt them back together. Unfortunately, I bypassed Etsy for the conversion in favor of Mark's aunt, and there does not seem to have been any progress since I gave it to her in October, so here we are in Clashfordshire.
I made the curtains last year, using fabric my mom spotted on the sale table at the fabric store. I think I was swayed by the fact that my mom liked it and that the fabric was on sale for a total of $30 instead of all of the $30/yard fabrics I had been seeing (and loving). I was so overwhelmed by the fabric hunt by that point, so I went with it, despite not being a red person AT ALL. I followed Janell's tutorial over at House of Fifty (formerly Isabella & Max Rooms), and while the tutorial was excellent, even for this novice, I made one crucial mistake. Where I was working with red fabric, I wanted to use a light blocking material to line the drapes to prevent fading. What I did not realize was that some light blocking material, i.e. the stuff I bought, is stiff and almost plastic-y, kind of like a shower curtain. It did not occur to me that this would inhibit my curtains from hanging in pretty little folds, and it certainly did not occur to me that my tying the panels up to train the folds would result in messy, quasi-accordion pleating. The curtains just look sloppy, which pisses me off because they were so much work and yet I really don't care for them.
Every so often, I would halfheartedly peruse fabrics online, but I hadn't come across anything that made me want to pull the trigger and go to the trouble of sewing new panels. However, around Christmas, I was picking up a few little gifty odds and ends at World Market and spotted a tablecloth that looked familiar. It was the same fabric that they had been selling as curtains last summer but that sold out before I could get my hands on them. I found four 120" tablecloths and snagged them with the intention of sewing curtains for my kitchen. They (and the nice, pliable lining fabric I purchased this time) have been sitting in the office upstairs for nearly six months now while I dithered and debated about what to do in the kitchen. And then it hit me: HEY, THAT FABRIC MIGHT WORK IN THE BEDROOM. I grabbed one of the panels and threw it over my bedroom door to see it against the walls. It's been hanging there for a few days, and I think I'm liking it. The blue isn't exactly the same, but it blends nicely.
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| See the lovely Govern-mint Institution Green in the bathroom there? I cannot WAIT to gut that bathroom. |
So that's the seriously long winded story about my decision to make new bedroom curtains. What do you think? Improvement or mistake?
*Oh, forgot to mention -- we have been living without shades since replacing our windows A YEAR AGO; oh my god, we are slackers. Also, my sincere apologies, people of the completely separate neighborhood behind us who we thankfully will never meet, at least not in a manner that will identify us as Those People Without Shades In Their Bedroom. We are as grateful for the large trees in our backyard as you are, believe me.
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