The Evolution of Our Master Bedroom

First of all, technically this isn't the master bedroom of the house. We let our boys have the bigger bedroom and we took the smaller second bedroom. But we still consider it the master because it would be weird to call it the second bedroom :) I digress.

After we moved into the "master" I set about trying to make it the dream bedroom we wanted. Only we had an extremely tight budget. So here is what I came up with.

Well, I suppose I should show you a before first :)


When we first moved into the house, the walls were white. We remedied that by painting them a spring green color. When we moved ourselves from the master bedroom into the smaller second bedroom, the green felt cold and uninviting. I tried to fix it by warming up the bed with a chocolate color.

For more uninspiring before photos of our master bedroom look here.
The windows were naked and the five drawer dresser blocked off the light. We put the dresser in the boys' room for added clothing storage. That freed up a bit of space and then we purchased this for $40 off Craigslist..mirror included!


We also ditched the torchiere lamp that was broken..why hang onto something that we thought was ugly and non-functional?

I was so exicted about the dresser because we have had separate dressers ever since we got married! Finally, our clothes share the same abode just as we do :) Plus, it is solid wood and it has beautiful bones. I have plans for this baby!

So, our room went from cold green (sorry, can't remember the name of the color) to Anonymous (Behr).

(Am I the only one who loves the name of this color?) Anonymous...sounds so mysterious.

So now we have a beautiful soothing grey on the wall. We love it. It feels like being wrapped in a soft cocoon. When I researched how color affects moods, it said that grey can be depressing to some people. Yikes, oops, I had already bought the paint by then! We went for it and here is what it looked like.


(Sorry the lighting wasn't the best that day)

The chocolate went well with the grey to our surprise, but we were tired of the bed covering. After searching I decided I was going to make our own duvet cover. I found this fabric for 50% off at the JoAnn's over here.


I loved the patterned fabric and it went perfectly with the wall color. Unfortunately, it was extremely noisy and it looked way too masculine sitting on our bed. So I had to repurpose it into this:




(Close up of the curtains)

It makes such luxurious curtains! I am so happy with the outcome. I still need to figure out what to do with the solid color mercury fabric though...

And then at Ross I found a comforter with pillows for $24. I threw that on the bed and loved it! Here is the room, not quite finished yet.

Surprisingly enough we left the comforter as is and we love our new room!


Here is the breakdown of the costs:

Primer for window frame: $0 (leftover from other project)
Paint: $23.47
Curtain rod: $3.27
Curtain rings: $14 (2 sets--$7 a set)
12 yards of fabric: $36.49 (currently only using 6 yards for the curtains)
9 drawer dresser with large mirror: $40
Comforter and pillows: $24
Black pillow: $5

Grand total: $146.23

The room still has some finishing touches so it will probably come close to $200 when all is said and done. It won't ever come close to the rooms you see in a designer magazine, but it is a room we love and now enjoy being in. I am really proud of using what we had and sticking to a real life budget :)

What really surprised me the most about this makeover is how I really love the monochromatic look our room now sports. I am sure that I will throw in some bold color with accessories later on, but I love the soothing grey with the dramatic black and bright white.

Our room is finally a place that beckons you to relax and rest.

Sniff Sniff

Do you hear that? It's the sound of me crying.

Melissa at 320 Sycamore is having a paint party and I can't go. Why? Because my camera batteries are dead. Sigh.

I would love to show off the Bayside (Behr) in our bathroom. But alas, you will just have to imagine the soothing deep teal color.

And Anonymous (Behr) looks lovely on our master bedroom walls. Blogger isn't uploading photos right now so I will have to try later. Anonymous is like being wrapped in a soft grey cocoon. We love it!

Our boys' room is an Oops! paint from Home Depot ($5 for the gallon...wahoo!). Unfortunately, either the HD staff, or the people who brought the paint back, painted over the color code so I have no idea what the name is. It is a bright sky blue that goes perfectly with their curtains and bedding.

Our little girl's room is going to be chocolate brown with pink. Still a work in progress right now. The walls are currently a dark deep brown ( I have no idea what color because we had a major ordeal with an oops paint) and it is nice and soothing...perfect for naptime!

The family/ schoolroom is Grass Cloth (Behr) and it is so restful and relaxing.

My kitchen will become Grape Leaves (Behr) eventually. Currently it is Summer Heat (Behr) which I completely fell in love with at HD off of the paint card. It coordinated well with my chili pepper theme (hey my husband is from Mexico, so what can I say...chickens just aren't us). But after almost three years, I have tired of it and want to try something new.

And our living room and hallway are Brown Sugar (Behr)...I think. It is a nice neutral brown color that goes with everything.

Oh and most of these rooms have been painted over more than three times...LOL!

We LOVE paint over here at Five in the Potter's Hand! (Well, maybe "we" is more "me" and less "him") My hubby dislikes painting and would be immeasurably happy if I would stop changing up the colors. However, he indulges my whimsy :)

Thoughts on Inspiration and Decorating

Wow. I hadn't realized that it had been almost a month that I haven't blogged about anything!

Life has seemed so busy as of late.

I have been busy.

Soon I will have pictures to show you what I have been busy doing.

I have been painting. And sewing. And in true distracted homemaker fashion, none of it has anything to do with my master bedroom makeover, or our family room remodel.

I drive my husband bonkers when I start up a project and finish it halfway. And some of you out there wouldn't dream of doing that. But I have to work while I am inspired. If I lose said inspiration, you can kiss completion goodbye. (Which is why I am extremely grateful that God gave me a man who is driven to completion. If I were in charge of the family room remodel, we would still be at the studs stage. Because it takes strong vision to see the finished product through all the dust and sweat.)

So I started sewing my bedspread out of a gorgeous piece of fabric. As I laid out the top half of the duvet cover on my bed for a test run, I realized two things:

A) The fabric looked really masculine laid out on the bed. (Which was weird because it didn't look masculine to me before. It was the perfect blend of masculinity and femininity, or so I thought anyway!)
B) Sleeping under it was near impossible because it was so NOISY! Hubby vetoed it as a bed covering.

So now I have a gorgeous piece of fabric that doesn't have a home. Sigh. Homeless fabric is so frustrating.

Rather than dwell on that failure, I decided to become inspired in my bathroom. One evening and several sore muscles later, and I fell in love with my bathroom all over again. It is now a soothing deep blue teal color (I would show you pictures but the batteries in my camera are dead and I have been too busy to go buy some more).

And one good piece of inspiration deserves another...

While out shopping with a friend this weekend, I came across a sheet set that would make perfect curtains for my sons' room. And it just happened to match the OOPS paint I had gotten at Home Depot a couple of months back. Cost for the paint: $5.00. Cost for the curtains and accessories: $8.99.

So yesterday was spent repainting our sons' room. And our boys are immensely thrilled with the new color. We rearranged furniture at the request of our oldest (who is very much like his mother in the fact that he likes to rearrange furniture) and culled toys that were unloved.

So while de-inspired for my bedroom, I managed to become reinspired for two other rooms.

My next project to start and finish is my kitchen.

Do you decorate according to inspiration? Do you get all excited about a project and then not finish because you ran into a major snag? Or do you push through and find inspiration in a different way?

Master Bedroom Makeover In Process!

Here is a photo of our new dresser...this behemoth is too wide to fit in the picture! It won't stay this lovely warm color for long...my hubby has varnishing on his mind! I love it because I have been looking for a dresser that we can BOTH share. Now I know that this sort of thing is commonplace in most households--the husband and wife share ONE dresser--but we weren't able to afford fancy furniture like that in the beginning stages of our marriage. So he got a five drawer dresser and I got a wicker dresser. Yeah, not so great to keep clothes in. Anyway, I found this on Craigslist for $50...we asked them if they would take $40 cash and they agreed! We got a NINE drawer dresser, solid hardwood (no veneer here) PLUS a huge mirror for $40!
Halfway done with the painting!
All the way done...please excuse the clutter on the dresser! (And I have no idea why the toilet paper is in my room...ah the joys of having children!) I really like how the grey makes the white trim really pop!

When I first started painting this room, the grey looked lavender up against the celadon that was there before. I panicked and prayed "Oh God PLEASE let this dry darker and look more grey. Otherwise my husband will have a fit! He will not appreciate a lavender room, Lord."
My fears were unfounded because by the time my hubby got home the paint had dried into the lovely mist grey that I fell in love with on the paint chip card.

(The color is Anonymous by Behr)

I always thought it would be such a fun job to come up with the paint color names! How does one go about applying for that?


Anyway, I LOVE the new color. It is so soothing and restful..exactly what I was going for! More changes ahead...this is just the beginning!

Total cost so far: $117.45 (And no, I most certainly did NOT pay that much for paint! Those extra expenses are for some pieces of the puzzle that I will reveal later on!)

Confusion in the Bedroom

So that title caught your eye!

Just this evening I was conversing with my husband about how important a catchy title was. He is writing a paper for school and is having difficulties deciding on what title to use. I told him that he needed to have a title that would pique the interest of the reader. Something that would give them a taste and leave them wanting more.

Anyway....

No, the confusion is about the bedroom, not in the bedroom! Although, because we were in the bedroom, I thought the title befitted the situation...lol :)

Okay, back on track here. So when you ask your mate (for the majority of my readers..all five of you...the gender of said mate is male and will be referred to as husband from now on), your husband, what colors he likes, do you get a blank stare in reply? If you ask him what he thinks about the stripes you just painted today, does he shrug and tell you "whatever you want to do"? Do you, after receiving little to no information on his likes and dislikes, feel extremely frustrated and not quite sure of yourself and your design as you did before?

Join the party!

I love my husband. He is my strength, my protector, my lover, my friend, my tickle-mate, my equilibrium, my safe spot, my risk-taker, my adventurer, my creative complement, my man of few words, my dependable, always available, handsome, sexy, full of integrity, masculine yet tender, powerful man. But his highly creative mind does not tread the domain of home decor. Alas, he can visualize a great pallet-board system to keep our firewood off of the ground, but he cannot visualize the DIY platform bed I want him to make for us. It's a good thing I can draw!

So I am left to my own devices...and HGTV. (Did you know that you can watch full episodes of Colorsplash, Myles of Style, etc? So for folk like me who cannot afford cable *sniff* and who still crave a shot of decorating inspiration, you can have your cake and eat it too!)

But, bless him, he knows that he doesn't know enough in this area and so he leaves it to me. I just hope he likes the end result!

Yikes Stripes!

Before...

After...

I am really liking the geometric element the stripe adds to the space. No, it's not level...which is a fact that is driving me crazy, but it was a temporary test area. And just remember that the final wall color is not going to be green! Also, if I choose to do stripes in the room, I will be certain that they are straight, non-feathery and LEVEL.

DIY:: Bring It Into the 21st Century!

What do you do when you have wood trim that screams 1970's? Oh and did I mention you don't have any extra money to splurge on nice updated trim?


You remember that you have some KILZ primer in your garage and you proceed to prime your window frame. For zero dollars and about a half hour of time invested, you can have a totally updated look!
(Yes, the right side needs more primer...I have about a coat to go on that one but I couldn't resist taking the photo halfway through!) No, I'm not going to leave it primer white. I plan on eventually getting a nice glossy crisp white to finish it off, but for now "it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful". And yes, I do see the brush strokes on the wall surrounding the window. I am painting the walls a different color so I'm not worried about those.

All in all, I am very proud of my thirty minute makeover for my window. Usually I wait until all is perfect and I have everything I need. But waiting for perfection means I might wait forever. So I decided to do it now and worry about fine-tuning it later on.

And Remodeling Guy, you're right paint does count as remodeling! :)

WANTED: Inspiration for Bedroom

Many of my favorite blogs have made the bedroom their focus. After seeing those bedrooms and looking at mine, I offer mine up as a What Not To Have Bedroom Tour.


This is the entrance to the hallway (you are looking into the kids' room from our bedroom)




Here is a lovely shot of our sliding closet doors circa 1974. The one thing I absolutely love in my room is a photo of me and Mr. Querido. The "nightstand" on his side of the bed is a filing cabinet. And yes, there are files in there pertaining to finances. (I know, it is a BIG no-no to do that. Can I just say we were desperate for nightstands?)


Here is a full shot of our bed. The torchiere lamp doesn't even work...so why is it still in there?? I do like the ambience that the tealight candle wall sconce my sister gave me. But in looking at these photos I realize I need something to make it more proportionate to the size of the bed.

Here we have a shot of my side of the bed. In a desperate attempt to make the filing cabinet nightstand look decent, I place a glass hurricane thingy with some decorative rocks and a tea light. The black mark on the wall is the soot from said candle :( The weird thing hanging low on the wall are my necklaces which need a better home.

This is our high and long window which is quite naked. Below this window is baseboard heating which has a mind of its own. We don't want to burn down our house with drapes so we leave the window naked until we can come up with a better solution. I don't like the naked window and I DESPISE mini-blinds.

Over here as you turn right is my husband's dresser which makes the room feel lopsided.

And this is the crowning glory...what my husband affectionately dubbed "the boob light"! Notice the lovely popcorn ceiling which surrounds it. (Now you, like me, will never again be able to see one of these light fixtures without cracking up!)

So ends the tour of WHAT NOT TO HAVE in your bedroom.

And now if any of you creative ladies would like to offer advice, I will gladly accept! Oh did I mention that there is ZERO budget for decorating? That is also the problem, I have champagne tastes on a beer budget (metaphorically speaking of course!).

After looking at my room with a very critical eye, I have come to the conclusion that:
A) I really hate the color of the walls
B) Nothing is proportionate to the bed
C) The bed does not make a statement
D) I REALLY need curtains
E) I need some more photos of me and my hubby
F) I need some colorful artwork
G) I really need to ditch the boob light!
H) I need some new pillows, mine are in such sad shape
I) I want new bedding, I am sick of the chocolate
J) I need a bedroom with decor that can be changed up at whim with minimal effort and expense
K) I get bored with the same stuff too easily

Paint Expedition from Perdition

Remember this room?

Yeah, well as you can see that was back in March! It has stayed that way up until today...

Take one motivated man...


One can of oops paint for $5...
Add in two trips to the home improvement store which rhymes with "blows"...

After spending $12 and TWO HOURS at said home improvement store, come home with the wrong paint color and mess up the beautiful paint job that was in process.

Go back to OTHER home improvement store, spend $24 and only TEN MINUTES for them to match the paint EXACTLY, bring home to frustrated hubby...

Who works tirelessly to get the room looking uniformly chocolatey...yummmy!













Daddy had a little help...

Yes, we started off with a $5 can of oops paint that was the PERFECT color for our music/media room. My husband started painting and then ran out because the previous light green color on the walls had to be covered twice with the brown.

Armed with the paint lid, as I naively assumed that there would be no issue with matching it, I set off for the home improvement store that had created the oops paint. Oh the bliss of sweet ignorance. Apparently, the lid contained the "ingredients" for a gallon and they couldn't figure out how to get it sized down to a quart. I was told that I needed to get a bigger piece of the paint. Preferably the stir stick dipped into the desired hue. So I not-so-cheerfully leave for my home.

Upon my arrival, I decided that wouldn't it be fun if we all did a Lowe's run? Let's drag the kids along, they love home improvement stores! Hubby decided that was a great idea so we set off optimistically.

The kind lady that was working the paint department before wasn't at the counter any more. There was also a line of three or four people ahead of me. Honey, why don't you take the boys to go look at tools or something? So off they went. And Miss Precious and I waited....and waited...and waited. Finally, after an eternity had passed, it is my turn. I hand her the stir stick and the paint lid. She confidently puts it in the color matching machine and voila! out pops the "perfect" match! Looks a little dark at first blush, but she is sure it will lighten up as it dries. Uses the hairdryer on the stir stick to compare the two colors. Yeah, not a match, let's try again because this is such a fun game! Second try yields the same result. Only this time let's throw in a little employee attitude which consisted of her throwing the stick down in exasperation and telling me that I should go the the paint chips and try and match it myself. We are professionals here!

So, a little even less cheerfully, but by no means rude, however not to happy with the customer service, I dutifully go over to the myriad of paint chips and attempt to pick my perfect match. Hmmm...this is going to be a little harder than I thought. Why couldn't the dumb machine just match the lid? Maybe this brown will work..."Sea Lion Brown"...it looks like I may have found the twin to my oops paint.

Strolling over to the paint desk, I find myself behind another two or three person line. After another eternity passed, "Have you been helped yet ma'am?" Why no, I just enjoy standing here watching everyone else get assisted! (Can you tell the blood pressure is rising just a tad by now? Oh and sweet sleeping baby has awakened too!) Yes, kind sir, I just need a QUART of this color. OK, so that's a gallon of the satin interior? NO, just a QUART is all I need.

Seriously, an hour and forty-five minutes later with three very irritable and hungry children in tow (I wasn't aware it would have been this long of an ordeal otherwise I would have brought snacks!), hubby and I escape back home.

He is eager to get finished with the room and starts in. Cries of dismay draw me to the room. It looks like someone had graffitied the wall and we had attempted to paint over it. The color was so much lighter of a shade than the original. I joked about having the graffiti look, but hubby was not amused.

Banished to the home improvement store again. Only this time I hit Home Depot. The most cheerful girl was working the paint area. She matched the paint and had me out the door in less than ten minutes. Only problem was that now I had to fork over $24 for a new gallon of paint to cover the erroneous hue.

Filled with ever-brimming hope and optimism, I hand the paint can to Mr. Querido. He sighs and goes back to the room paintbrush in hand. It is a PERFECT match.

So $41 of paint later, we have this beautiful chocolate cocoon...



Oh and my frugal Friday tip? Be sure if you get an oops paint, make certain you only need that one can to cover everything, otherwise you may end up spending $36 you didn't want to!

Living Room Makeover...

Before:
Haphazardly thrown together furnishings. Ill-fitting to the space. An awkward, bare corner that housed the CD player/ radio. Let's not forget to notice the ugly air conditioning unit! Oh, and please excuse the clutter, I promise it disappears on the afters...lol!


The problems:
We need all the seating we can get. We have to keep the ugly loveseat with the beige slipcover (we do have two boys after all). The chaise lounge is so underused and sadly neglected in that lonely corner. Plus, in the wintertime, it would be too close to the woodstove for comfort. One major eyesore...the baseboard heating that we never use but still need to keep until we get an alternative installed (that will probably be in about 20 years...lol!). The baseboard heaters run the length of the window and the long wall that joins the living room with the kitchen.





The sofa just piled up against the hard-to-fill long wall that joins the living room with the kitchen/dining room...





Oh and the opposite wall of the fireplace is the TV cabinet. Which, I loved the photos, but the space was still awkward.


All it took was a little creativity and willingness to think about the furniture arrangement with a fresh perspective. A little bit of shifting the sofa, loveseat and chaise lounge. Bring the bookcase from the hallway to fill the awkward corner. Think about a different place to put the photos.


After: And voila! The solution:

A lovely window seat that invites you to sit and read awhile in the soft light streaming from the window.

A color-coordinated bookcase complements the chaise lounge. We managed to hide the very-necessary but very-unaesthetically-pleasing
air conditioning. And it was my husband's idea to place the candelabra on top of the bookcase to finish it off.

Now the long wall has a gallery feel to it...and it includes my favorite objets d' art...my kids! :)





We flipped the long sofa to parallel the window. And the well-loved loveseat (with oh-so-handy washable slipcover) backs up to the couch. When you are cooking in the kitchen someone can comfortably sit and chat with you!

However, my favorite part about this arrangement of the loveseat, is that I don't have to see it when I first come in the front door! It disappears behind the much nicer looking couch :)









Total cost: $0

We just rearranged and used what we had :) I love makeovers that don't cost anything...lol! And I LOVE my new living room. The kids do too. When Miss Precious woke up and I took her into the living room, she just stared and looked all around. When the boys woke up, they were so enthusiastic about the change. Everyone is happy, including my dear hubby who helped me with it all!

Before, our living room didn't reflect our personal style at ALL. Now, we have subtle sophistication while still being child-friendly. My boys still have room to run around and spread out their toy cars and blocks. Miss Precious has plenty of room to roam. And I have a lovely spot to lounge and read a good book. Our living room now works for us! :)

MoRockin' Out

Ever since we got married, I have wanted Mr. Querido to have a music room. He plays bass guitar, and I wanted him to have a place for his guitars to be displayed and where he could store all the paraphenelia that goes with said guitars.

When we moved into our current home, I was a bit disappointed because we only had three bedrooms and we already had two boys and a girl on the way. It looked like Mr. Querido's music room was still a distant dream.

After we had Miss Precious, I realized that we weren't utilizing our space very well. We moved the boys into the much bigger master bedroom. Mr. Querido and I took the cozier second bedroom. Miss Precious's crib got squeezed into her brothers' room and now it is just collecting dust because she still sleeps with us...lol! All of this musical chairs methodology made room for what we now call the music/media room (aka: computer room)! I was so excited..finally my hubby would have a place to rock out!

But sadly, my inspiration took a nosedive when I attempted to mix up some old paint colors for a frugal way to cover the turquoise walls. (Yes, the boys' room was turquoise...and yes, WE were the ones that did that...lol!) I ran out of paint and so there has been an uneven turquoise swath about a foot deep all around the top of the room. It just looked awful, but budget constraints prevented me from fixing it.

Last weekend, I found an oops paint at Lowe's for FIVE DOLLARS! It is a lovely chocolate brown and slowly the decorating inspiration started to bubble. I thought about how I wanted the room to feel. Kind of lounge-ish and laid back.

We added a spare bed and turned it into a low couch. Plopped on some pillows and voila! Instant lounge! Something was still missing.
I also wanted some color to pop it. Originally, I considered orange to pair with the chocolate and maybe some lime green accents. (No, we are not afraid of bold color in the FITPH household..lol!) But then, Saturday night I couldn't sleep. I was up reading blogs (probably didn't help the insomnia any) and I just kept seeing the half-finished border out of the corner of my eye. Every time I turned around, there was the cavernous closet stuffed full of odds and ends. Very unpeaceful, very un-laid back. I decided to look through my fabric stash and see if I had ANYTHING that might cover up the cluttered closet. And then I found my inspiration....

My mom had given to me because, although she loved it, she couldn't find a use for it. If I remember what she told me, it is a hand-dyed batik. Oh it is just gorgeous and has the refined funky look I was thinking of. But I too suffered from the inability to find a use for it. Until now...

Stay tuned for my MoRockin' Room update (get it...Moroccan...MoRockin'? I crack myself up sometimes...lol!)