Bedroom makeover!

When we got married we were (un)fortunate enough to have been given a lot of hand me down furniture. Looking at the entertainment center made me cry. Our dining room table was ok but it was always worrisome when we had company and we wondered who would be next to have their butt fall through the seat. Dressers - gag. Old fake wood with gold finish. You know - the 80's favorite that some people (Jay's parents) still favor. They had boxes of these dressers so we took what we could get! Of course the dressers last about a year before falling apart so we spent a few years drawerless. They balanced ok on each other but you couldn't slide them. Pretty soon the drawers were on the floor and we thought maybe we should get new dressers. I wanted something that would last though. Which means shelling out the big bucks for something with nice heavy wood. We probably spent a year debating.

Our dining room table got too small too quickly. We couldn't all fit around it and we didn't have enough chairs left so we had to bring out the barstools. Which quickly got put away again because little boys and barstools don't mix in our house. My super awesome parents gave us a nice money gift for Christmas of 07 for the purpose of buying a new dining set. Again we wanted something wood - nice and heavy and sturdy. I fell in love with a table at IKEA - which does have some really nice dining sets - but the good sturdy ones are expensive and I didn't want to waste the money on something wobbly. I probably would have bought it anyway but they were out of stock. Jay wouldn't buy me the dresser I wanted so I cried and we left. On our way home we got a phone call from my mom saying RC Wiley was having a tax free weekend sale and encouraged us to look there. I hate RC Wiley. I can't even get started on the horrible customer service and experiences I've had there. But we stopped by and found a big, heavy, solid table and chairs for a very decent price. While we were waiting to buy it we looked through the clearance and found the most super awesome dresser ever. Big, heavy, wood, clean, good shape, etc. It was such a good deal I wouldn't let Jay pass it up so we got both.

That was the start of my grown up furniture. We found a great bench to go with the dining set at the pottery barn outlet. The dresser looks great in our otherwise boring room. And that's what makes me sad! A boring room for this nice dresser to live in! We've been looking at new homes but I think we've decided to hold off on buying something new until we move OUT of Utah. Until then we are going to try to love this house. And there are things about it I will always hate, but why get something new when I'm not taking care of or doing anything with this house!? So I've started.

Our bedroom is going to be first because that is where this baby will be born. We have a photographer coming to this birth and I'm stressing a little about this birth for various reasons so I want to make a nice peaceful happy place for this baby to be born. And I want it to look good in the pictures ;) So, here's the start of things. I should take a before picture and post it here. Unfortunately it won't be complete until June because the duvet cover we chose won't ship until then, but we'll have to live with that.


Our headboard. I love this. We've looked at a lot of the iron looking things and some of them are freaking heavy - ouch if it lands on your head. Some of them are too gaudy and some a little too modern for me. I also wanted something dark because our dresser is really dark wood. The mirror is very modern but the shape of some of the accents are a little Victorian. Best of my favorite worlds!


I'm still undecided about this but we need some kind of lamp for each side of the bed and I'm thinking of getting 2 and having one hand above each of our heads. They're very light weight in case they fall so I'm not too worried about getting knocked out. I like the hanging lamp idea because then we won't have something cluttering up any side tables. In fact, I won't even need one.


Our duvet cover. It's kind of pricey but I've decided to splurge a little. I love my down comforter and I have had a really hard time finding decent duvet covers that are good quality. We're on our 3rd right now and it was a great price, and so were the 2 before, but had I just bought a good one to begin with it would have lasted us years. And I'm planning on that! I like this because it's white so not very overpowering, but very bright and cheerful and I can use a lot of different accent colors. There is a painting my friend did for me years ago that I have wanted to put up so I went with that for colors and it will look perfect with this cover. Plus I have some purple sheer drapes that I really like so I can still use them with this. It's kind of modern and vintage at the same time which I also like. I think it can go a lot of ways.


So in addition to the painting I have (which is a portrait), I really like both of these (both from IKEA and very decent prices). I think I like the bigger one better and I have just the place for it, but I think I can fit the others on another wall.

I think we also narrowed the paint down to a yellow color. I can't really post the color here, but we've had really good experience so far with this paint so we're probably going with that and choosing the color "Freshness". It's a yellow.

We also really need to do something about the floor. We're redoing the living/family/dining/hallway so I'm thinking about doing our room too. L sprayed bleach all over the floor and dumped a bottle of lotion all over and randomly peed and chewed up gum and spit it out. (I just found the gum the other day - a pair of E's jeans were stuck to the floor with it)

We're also working on the girls room so I'll have to do another post sometime after they find their new bedspreads. They have all new furniture so the beds just need clothes and we need to paint. Fun. My most favorite joyous part.