Master Bedroom Before and After

Well, after three years of living in our house, I can say that our master bedroom is pretty much complete.  There are still a few little things we want to do, but I think it is finished enough to give it a blog post.  Here it is!

This is what it looked like before:

The big projects in this room were changing the window into a door, painting the room, and putting in the wood floor (which we put in throughout the whole house).  Then there was furnishing and decorating to do.  So, here are some more after pictures.

Nick found these curtain tie backs at an estate sale!

Our bedding is from Ikea.  The items on the walls are a mixture of things we already had and some new things I bought at Home Goods.

These are a couple of the things I framed above our bed.  The one on the right is something Nick wrote for me and gave me when he proposed.  The one on the left, he gave me for a recent birthday.  They are my favorite gifts from him ever.  (He will not like that they are posted on here, but I don't really think you can read them that well anyways....I'm still trying to convince him to let me share them on here).

This is Nick's side of the bed.  He made those shelves himself, and they are really unique.  I will have to post some up close pictures of them later.  I didn't think to take any when I was doing my little bedroom photo shoot, and now it is dark, and I am way too lazy to go take some now.

This would be my side of the bed.

One of the projects that I still have to do is paint this dresser white and change the handles on the drawers.  We'll see when I actually end up being motivated to do that.

So, there you have it.

Still to do to make this room completely complete:

Paint dresser

Crown Molding

Add more to the wall above the dresser

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plant pot

I saw these little pots, and decided that I wanted to do the same thing.  So, I gathered my materials: a pot, a paintbrush, mod podge, some fabric, and a computer.  The computer was for watching Friday Night Lights. Sidenote on that for a sec....it's the best show ever.  We finished all five seasons about a month ago and are still talking about it and missing it and telling everyone we know to watch it.....so WATCH IT!  Okay, back to the project...that little plant in the picture below is mint, and it is now dead.

This is really easy to do if you follow this tutorial.

And here it is sitting on my new serving cart in my dining room...with a different plant in it that will hopefully live a much longer and healthier life than it's predeccessor, Mr. Mint.

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Yippee for Dollar Tree!

I bought a three pack of these little composition books at Dollar Tree.  I loved the size of them, but not so much the look of them.

So, I decided to spruce them up a bit with a few scrapbooking supplies, a yo-yo, and some spray adhesive.

I organized them by topic, so I have a place to keep my scattered ideas whenever I think of them.

Cheap and easy.

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Dining Room Additions

A while back, I posted our dining room before and after.  I thought it was complete at the time, but I was wrong.  While shopping at Goodwill to find decorations for Molly's wedding, I found this little serving cart.

And then I remembered that I had this bulletin board stashed under our guest bed. This was from my bedroom in high school.

I used one of the strands of circle garland that I made for my birthday party to string along the top of the bulletin board for a little added decoration.

I added the cart, the bulletin board, and an old rug that belonged to my parents to our dining room, and I think it really finished everything off.

And to remind you what it looked like before, here's a picture:

Add a cute dog, and I'd say the room is complete.

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if only I could cover all my walls with this

This is what you call slatwall, and I am in love with it.

This was the one project I cared about getting done over Spring Break.

It was so easy to do….at least for me.  Nick might tell you another story.

But, he doesn’t have a blog….so here’s my story:

When my parents closed their store, they had so much slatwall.  They sold a lot of it, but we made sure to stash away some pieces for ourselves. (When I say we, I do not mean Nick and me.  He was not a fan of this idea.  When I say we, I mean the rest of my pack rat family and me).  At the time, Nick and I were living in an apartment and had no use for the slatwall and no place to store it, but I knew I would NEED it in the future.  I promised Nick that I would find a place to keep it and he wouldn’t have to worry about it.  For a while, it resided in my parent’s garage, and when they moved, it found a home in my sister’s garage.  But then she moved too.  From there, I cannot remember the trek this little wall took, but it has seen many-a-garage.   Nick had to move it every time (so much for not having to worry about it).  That made him a very pleasant person to be around because he really likes lifting awkward, heavy things and moving them all over Orange County, especially when they are for his wife who he adores. 

After touring the garages of Orange County, the slatwall finally ended up in our garage when we moved into our house.  You’d think that was the end of the story….but you’d think wrong. 

That slatwall sat and sat in our garage.  We were, after all, doing tons of work to the house, and hanging slatwall was not top priority.  So, it sat in a very annoying spot where it was blocking everything.  And, every time Nick would try to work in the garage, his frustration levels would reach all time highs.  People don’t think there is anything that can get Nick mad, but they are wrong.  That slatwall could really piss him off.  (Me, on the other hand, I never piss him off).  Just as he was about to blow his top, we (as in, the rest of my pack rat family and me) found a brilliant little place to store it, where it would be out of sight, out of mind.  And so it was….

…Until the day finally arrived when we were able to put that slatwall to good use….

 All we had to do was cut it to the right size and screw it into the wall.  Then we framed it with some leftover framing from the store. (When I say we, I mean Nick.)

I loaded it up with supplies for all the scrapbooking and knitting that I never do.

And then I sat and stared at it, drooling over its magnificence.

This part of our house once was a laundry room.  The washer and dryer hookups were moved into the garage long ago, so we decided to make this a space for some extra storage.  I knew that this would be the perfect place for the slatwall as soon as we moved into the house.   

I love it!  

***If you want to do this yourself, just go to a bookstore that is going out of business (sadly, there are a lot), and buy some of their slatwall.  Make sure that you also buy the acrylic to go on it.  It's cheap and easy!***

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the chair that almost got away

We were cleaning out our garage over Spring Break when we came across a lonesome unwanted chair that we had stashed away out of sight. 

I told Nick it was time to send it off to Goodwill so that it could find a nice loving home where it would be appreciated.  So we tossed it aside into the unwanted pile.  As we continued our cleaning, organizing and purging, my eyes kept wandering back to the poor little lonely chair.  We had rescued her from my parent's store when it was going out of business.  How could I abandon her?  Could I really let her go that easily?  This was her home, and she was one of my only tangible memories from the store (along with a few other things...ok, a lot of other things that I can't bring myself to get rid of.)  

Oh the guilt! 

(This is why things that I promise Nick I will take to Goodwill sit in my trunk for months on end.  Precious Moments Chip and Dip Platters!  How could I bare to get rid of them?)

So, as I looked upon the little chair and pondered all these things in my heart, a thought entered my mind.  It dawned on me that maybe, just maybe those little cushions on the chair could pop off.  And that maybe, just maybe I could recover them.  So, I took the closest screwdriver and went to work popping those cushions off (much to Nick's dismay...he was worried about his screwdriver and my ability to use it.) But, I am my father's daughter, and I have quite a bit of handy dandiness to me, and those cushions popped right off.  Sure enough.  This would be an easy job.

I can even use a staple gun.

And so it was.  Our little chair got a makeover, and we found love in our hearts once again for her.  She will not be stashed away in the garage anymore, but rather, will be proudly displayed in our office as my desk chair.

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Dining Room Before and After

We finally have an "after" for one of our rooms.

 

This is what we started with:

And we did our best to work with it until the house was ours:

Since the ceilings and lighting and floor and baseboards and paint are all done now, I am having so much fun decorating.  This room is the first room that is completely completed, with pictures on the wall to finish it off.

My total cost to furnish and decorate this room was about $48.

Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

The sign was a wedding gift from my dad's cousin, who makes all kinds of signs using vinyl.

The chairs were from the book section in my parents store, and my Grandma made the pillow.

The wine rack was $40 of the $48 that was spent on this room.

The other $8 was spent on frames from Goodwill and a Rite Aid that was going out of business.

My parents bought me the table for my college apartment, and the mirror on the wall was a wedding shower gift.

I think that about covers everything.

I love this room now.  It feels so complete.

So there you have it.  Our first before and after.  There will be many more to come...hopefully in the near future.

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