Trigger warning: This post is mostly about my room makeover, but I do mention my miscarriage.
As soon as I got pregnant I told Spenser, "I think my super powers are gone." I just had no energy - creative or otherwise. I had never felt like this before! I could barely function to make dinner for us, let alone re-decorate a room. I really missed having that drive to change something in our home, but at the end of the day, I just needed to rest, so I took a break for a few months. Thankfully, I was pregnant during the slower part of my year with real estate, so I took advantage of the time to feel sick, take all the naps, and just take it easy. Getting our house in order went to the back burner.
But, after we lost Lennon, that nesting energy started to return within days. Unfortunately I had an unexpected complication from my miscarriage which caused severe pelvic floor spasms that lasted almost a week. They were extremely painful, and the only way I was comfortable was laying completely flat in bed. So, I spent most of my recovery laying in bed watching Queer Eye in a room that was nowhere close to being complete, with creative energy coming back to life about how to make it better. I knew that getting into a project again would give me a huge boost of happy -- one that I really needed -- so as soon as I was physically recovered I got to work.
We had made some improvements to our bedroom when we moved in, but mostly it was in disarray. When we bought our house in October 2018, we scraped the popcorn ceilings, installed a ceiling fan, installed new carpet, and purchased a king size bed. But, one of the side effects of the popcorn ceiling removal were water stains all down the walls. We had huge stains of dirt, water, and bits of ceiling stuck all over the room, and big wall screws in the windows from the giant drapes the previous owners had hung. At the time, we just weren't ready to take on this room, so we lived with it as it was. It was in pretty rough shape!
If you look closely at the picture below, you can see the ceiling paint marks all along the back wall -- they went around the whole room - and huge water stains dripped below them. The room just felt boring and bare and definitely not peaceful! After the experience I had had in here, I needed this room to feel like a safe place again, so I knew I wanted something super serene and quiet.
My one rule of decorating is that I won't start a project until I know I can finish it. I will wait until I've been inspired with every detail, pull them all together in my mind, shop for all the pieces, and then once I have it all mis en place, I'll get to work. This works out really well because it allows me to fully check a space off our to do list (or at least mostly), so I can comfortably move on to a new project without feeling like I have things half done everywhere.
I selected my paint color first. I do this by putting up a few samples on the wall, and living with them for a few days. I always try out samples on different walls with different light, and next to furniture to see what pops. I had a clear winner with this color (it's the darker blue in the photos below) - Ben Moore Palace Pearl - so I knew the rest of the room would be built around that.
Since we already had our king bed (we bought our SECOND Leesa Mattress when we upgraded to the king size... I really can't recommend enough! You can read about my experience with that here) I knew I didn't need to change out our bedding. It was being washed in the photo above, but we had received beautiful bedding from our wedding registry earlier last year. I love this bedding because it's weighty, but not hot. We like the heavy feeling of it when we sleep, but it's not overly warm. Plus, it's very durable against cat claws. Since we have two kitties that often play on the bed, having something that wouldn't easily pill has been crucial. This has held up to the test!
Since the furniture and bedding wasn't changing, my to do list looked like the following:
So, here's what I did:
✅Paint the room Palace Pearl by Ben Moore
✅Purchase new curtains and rods at Target. I bought the 95" curtains and hung them above the window frame. It's a trick to make your ceilings look taller!
✅Purchased new lamps at Home Goods (these aren't the exact ones, but close!)
✅Refreshed a few new plants with this cute planter stand from Target
✅Added a dressing stool and hamper for my husband's side, where he usually collects a mountain of clothes on the floor (I don't have a link for these, sorry!)
✅Added some hooks for additional closet storage
One more before and after:
The only thing remaining on our to do list for this room is to add crown molding to the ceiling. We hope to do that in the next few weeks, but we've never done it before so we need to research a bit before we get started. I'll be sure to do a full tutorial on that as soon as it's installed.
No comments:
Post a Comment