Friday, January 23, 2015

Because the bedroom needs love too.

Hey guys! Happy Friday! How was your week? Mine is rockin since we gave the bedroom some love. Because it was completely functional, we haven't done anything in there since we moved in. In our first two weeks in the house, we ripped out the innards of the old closet and installed a closet system we already had to give us some extra hanging space and we built Ikea wardrobes in lieu of using dressers.




Sorry for the grainy cell phone pictures...we have weird light in our room and this was a long time ago! The wardrobes fit very nicely in a large alcove on the left side of room.

I did one more project in our bedroom before we abandoned it completely and that was re-facing the closet doors because I could not stand looking at them. True story.


Since then its been pretty quiet. Lets recap what we've got in the bedroom. There is a bed. Right in the middle. Thank goodness because it wouldn't be much of a room without a bed huh? The bed is on the back wall of the room between two windows. It is cozy with a duvet/duvet cover. There was a nail on the wall above the bed where I randomly hung a nice little wood bicycle picture The Engineer got for me when he was down in the Keys. So thoughtful that guy :) This was by no means a permanent home for this little picture, but it was much better than having nothing up there. I bought two long rugs, one on the main side of the bed and the other is identical but at the foot of the bed because we walk there all the time. A side note on the runners - I had to put a rug gripper pad under them because they are slippery death traps on the wood floor. With the rug grip pads there are no problems at all.

I think we were in the house about five or six months when I got fed up with the lack of a night stand and got the pair pictured below (we had one night stand but it was on The Engineer's side of the bed and the night stand that I previously used in our apartment had been reallocated to the guest bedroom because we confiscated the old night stand from there and upcycled it - it now resides in our dining room). You also might take notice of the inconspicuous extension cords on the floor. These extension cords are located as such because there are no electrical outlets on the back wall. Yeah, I know. It is unfortunate. On the left side of the bed we at least thought this through and ran extension cords from the plug behind the wardrobes when we installed them so we would have access to the power. On the right side there is just a cord plugged into the wall. This is a problem we have yet to address properly, for now we have extension cords spaghettied on our floor. On the right side of the bed is one of our floor lamps. There is not a light kit in the ceiling fan and no built in lighting. Sadly, the only wall switch controls the ceiling fan so you have to fumble around with the lamps in the dark to get some light.



Turning around to the front of the room, there isn't much to see haha! We have our other floor lamp and the closet I redid. On the far right is our singular light switch that turns the fan on and above that is an abandoned control panel from an old security system. Thaaat's it. 


We had thrown around the idea of a sofa table for the wall pictured above. However, our bed is longer than the average bed because it has sliding storage at the foot. After some brainstorming we thought a long shelf on the wall would work well. I had also just bought a set of picture frames that I wanted to hang on this wall so the two upgrades complimented each other.

To build the shelf we purchased a long board (from Home Depot) and three EKBY HENSVIK brackets (from Ikea). While at Ikea we also purchased a table lamp with a toggle switch with the hope that it would be easy to turn on in the dark. We didn't purchase the shelf from Ikea because we wanted one that was about the same length of the wall. Additionally, a raw board allowed us to do whatever we wanted to with it. The brackets were white and we decided to stain the shelf with stain we had left over from another project.


The only problem with this was that once a full coat was on, we hated it. It wasn't that we didn't like the color, but it was so red. It was just too much for our room. The bed and wardrobes are already different colors, putting in a red shelf just didn't seem right.


So I sanded it all off and started over. I wasn't even that disappointed because I knew in the end we would be much happier. We knew white would do the trick, so off the stain came, and on white paint went.


With a dry shelf, brackets, and our pictures, we got to work on sprucing up the wall. We first tried to pull the old security panel off only to find that the screws have square heads. Really? We left that there for now, but we are going to try to jam an allen wrench in there or use pliers to get them out before we go buy a square attachment. We still need to do that...


The picture frame set I bought (not my typical style to buy a set like this, but I saw it in Bed Bath & Beyond when we were spending the last of our wedding gift cards and really liked it) came with a paper guide for hanging. SO NICE! We just taped it up on the wall (leveled, of course) and nailed directly through the paper.



We hung the pictures only to find that they weren't very well balanced. I used command strips to secure one corner of all the pictures so they would sit straight :)

We then brought the shelf in and eyeballed where we wanted it height wise. While The Engineer held the shelf level, I marked the center and two outside locations for the brackets with a horizontal line under the shelf. We then mounted the brackets with the top screw directly on these lines (which moved the shelf height up about two inches, but we had accounted for that).


This method actually worked perfectly and the shelf came out completely level. The table lamp we bought was going on this new shelf. We decided to drill a hold for the cord to pass through the shelf to make it look a little nicer. We just used gradually increasing bit sizes until the plug could fit through. The lamp sits directly on top of the hole so we didn't even bother painting the inside or anything like that.


We screwed the shelf to the brackets and pulled the lamp cord through the pre-drilled hole and bam! We now have a wonderful wall with pictures, a shelf, and a little lamp.


I also requested a new comforter for Christmas because the old one was too dark for the room (we had it before we moved into the house). The lighter color of the new one helps a lot. 



We still need to remove the rest of the security panel and put a key hook in its place and secure the lamp cord under the shelf and mount a cord hider on the wall for it. We also need to take care of our extension cords that provide power to our night stands.



I am planning some nice art to go above the head board and I am on the hunt for some furniture to put along the wall on the right of the bed. Perhaps an upholstered bench or a small table and chairs. I shall see what I find! For now though, these simple little changes have made our room so much more lovable.

That's all for now, I have some project prep to work on for the weekend :) Thanks for stopping by!

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