Stalled

I happened to call my sister today while she was looking at my blog.  "You've never posted any pictures of your finished cupboards,"  she said.  So true, so true. 

You see, I did finish and paint them (more or less) and I've learned to really like them too.  The rest of the room however, will take some time joining my vision and has left me feeling uninspired to post.

The necessities of daily life seem to be enough to fill nearly all of my time.  I have way too big of plans for the time alloted.  Honestly between church responsibilites, school volunteering, feeding my family, cleaning, spending time with the kids, cleaning, meetings, kids activities, cleaning, other people's needs, and cleaning there is very little time to fit a project in.

Here's hoping for a productive week. 

Master Bedroom Makeover Part 2

Finally time to paint.  The molding and lower wall are the same almost white color that the rest of my house trim is.  Luckily Kwal knew what color that was since our house was built by Ivory and it's their standard molding color. 

And then I painted the rest of the room a beautiful light gray.  I will go look at what the color is later.  I've forgotten at the moment. 

Hooray!
 (Don't mind my side tables.  They are a hand-me-down from my mother and someday I plan to revamp them by making them taller and painting them and.....someday I'll get to it.  For now I like that our alarm clocks don't shine in our faces.)

I do plan to add something above the bed, but haven't found just the thing yet.

Look at all that space underneath the bed!  I store all of our swimming gear, Halloween costumes, and luggage under there with room to spare.

I loved this bedding from the first time I saw it.  I don't think Target carries it anymore, but I think I'll be happy with it for some time.

The rest of the furniture in my room was purchased by my mom at a garage sale for my 16th birthday.  She painted them mint green while I was away at camp once.  They stayed that way until I painted them white 10 years ago in a surprise bedroom makeover in our last house while Daniel was out of town.  They are old, but super sturdy.  I took the top drawer out of this dresser to accommodate the DVD player.  Since we don't watch much television, this TV is there for exercising.

I took the original mirror off of the long dresser and plan to hang this new one on the wall at some point.

Though I have more planned such as taking down the wimpy dim light fixture and redoing a chandelier from downstairs, I think it is quite lovely enough.  It feels clean and relaxing.

Before:

And after:

Master Bedroom Makeover Part 1

This is a picture of the master when we first looked at the house. 

And just after we moved in.

It had a unique painting technique. I called is 'dirty rag wipe'.  The next pictures are me trying to capture the effect.

It was different than what is in the rest of the house, which has a glaze that brings out the texture (planning to change that too). I didn't mind the turquoise, but overall the master bedroom walls looked dirty. I wanted to go in a completely new direction.

 

Starting on the molding.  I opted to only do one wall for the first time ever.  (This house is so big that I don't think I can do things the same way I have before.  Every project seems more expensive and takes more time.) 

I wanted it to be more substantial than a lot of the board and batten I've seen lately and also a little more traditional so I added the extra trim piece to all the edges.  If I had a router I could have accomplished the same effect.  This is my workaround.  (The picture of mangled fingers and the accompanying story the first night of my woodworking class has prevented me from owning my own router.  I'm getting closer to giving in though.)

I only had to deal with one inconvenient corner...

I took the room's baseboard off and put in back over the top of my new boards so it looked continuous with the rest of the room.

I also filled in a bit of the texture on the walls so it wasn't so obvious my wall was showing through. 

Somehow, even with it only being one wall, my projects manage to take a long time.  I seem to underestimate the work required more often that not.  Maybe that's how I keep going.  :) 

Almost to the paint!

A King Size Bed

I have very few pictures of my completed projects, which doesn't help when you finally feel like putting up a blog post late at night.  Pictures of finished rooms must be taken in the daylight and when things are clean and lovely.  That takes effort.  Thankfully I did make that effort today for my master bedroom and took some pictures of it in it's current state.  These are not those pictures. I was reminded that I never posted about the bedframe I made last summer and that must come first:

I had wanted a king size bed (and most importantly a mattress that didn't hurt my back) for some time, however the cost of not only the mattress, but also the foundation and bedframe and bedding didn't excite me.  So I concocted a plan to make my own bedframe and headboard.  My parents have made lots of these type of bases for their beds (mine is somewhat modified) and my mom loves the storage they allow for underneath.  I made mine sit 14" off the ground so I could slide those clear sterilite tubs under it. 

Essentially the bed base is just a pywood top with posts cut to size for legs.  I built the bed in two pieces so it would actually be able to be moved in and out of the room.  Though you can't see in in the picture, each side actually has a center leg for support (total of 5 per side).  The mattress is veeeery heavy.   I scooted the legs in a bit so you wouln'd stub your toes.

I sent 2 bolts through the top to secure each leg.  I also trimmed the edges a bit so they wouldn't be so sharp.  I wasn't paying attention at one point and rounded more edges than needed.

I covered them in batting to cover the bolts and protect my mattress.  I had planned on also adding a layer of fabric, but realized the texture of the batting might actually keep the mattress from sliding around.  (In the end it didn't matter since I put a bedskirt over it.)

The base all ready for the mattress. 

Perfect.  The fantastic thing about this bed is that you don't have to buy a foundation (or what used to be a box spring).  According to the guy at the store the foundation is just a hard base.  It is not neccesary at all for the mattress.  For me that means that I have more storage room and it just cost that much less! 

Yay for storage!

For the headboard, I decided on a shape I wanted after searching for ideas forever.  I drew it on a sheet of particle board.  I would love to say that I thought ahead and used poster board to make the curve and then copied it onto the board, but I didn't.  It was a little trial and error. I added 2" (expensive) foam to the front (with spray adhesive), which I found painfully difficult to cut.  I'd rather not talk about it. I've heard an electric bread knife works well. I don't own one.

I have no pictures of these steps. 

I then wrapped the front and sides in the same batting stuff I used for the bed base and stapled it to the back.  The fabric went over that and was also stapled to the back.  The fabric I chose is actually a suit type fabric from Joann's. I just couldn't find the right color and texture in anything else. Turns out that it worked well and is really soft.

To attach the headboard to the base I used an extra board which was bolted to the headboard and then the base legs.  These bolts are removable.   

Tada!  I had purchased enough of the headboard material to make my own bedskirt.  I didn't even think about using a store bought one since I just wanted my bed to be whatever height I chose.  However, I came across a clearance target bedskirt for $10 and picked it up on a whim.  It fit perfectly and was close enough to the color that I doubt I will ever make the bedskirt I planned.

At first I only had king sheets and put some old queen bedding on.

Then I got my new bedding. (Love.)  Obviously it didn't coordinate with the turqoise.  I never intended it to.  :)

P.S.  I did run into a few unexpected problems.  Orginally I had planned to do nailhead trim near the edge.  It wasn't until after I added the thick foam (not in my origianl plan) that I realized I would have nothing to put the nailhead trim into.  I abandoned the trim plan and ended up liking the headboard even better I believe.  The final unforseen (because once again it wasn't in my origianl plan) problem that darn thick foam created was that in order for the now-thicker headboard to rest on the bed base the mattress had to bed scooted down and the bed base is now 2" too short.  My bedding doesn't stay in as well as I'd like.  I might try to fix the problem someday, but not now.  Too many other things to do...