Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:

I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:

I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.

I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.

I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.

On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.

This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.

The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.

On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 

So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.

For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)

Making Over the Craft Room

It was time to do a complete overhaul of the entire craft room.  Here's what it looked like before:

Cluttered, crammed full of small furniture, and with a terrible, dark paint job.  We basically moved in, shoved a bunch of crap into this room, and never touched it again.  Bad. 

This little bookshelf wasn't being put to use very well - it was crammed up against the doorway and stuffed full of random crap that belonged in the closet.  

The closet doors were missing, and nothing in the closet (or out of it, truthfully) was very well organized.

First I set about organizing the room.  There were a couple of boxes which should have been stored in the garage that I moved out there;  everything else in the closet got reorganized and re-stacked, so that it would STAY in the closet.  Surfaces were cleared, things were put into plastic bins and stored on an Ikea Hyllis shelving unit in the closet.

Next:

1. I painted the room, in a color I mixed myself by adding some yellow-gold to the SW Silvermist I had on hand leftover from my bedroom. The resulting shade matches up to SW Comfort Gray, if you're interested.  
2. I hung curtains - I moved the white Ikea Matilda semi-sheers from my bedroom into this room, once replacements for the bedroom arrived in the mail (more on that later).  
3. I found the closet doors in the garage, ordered some replacement hardware for them, and re-hung them in the room.  The doors also got a fresh coat of white paint.  
4. I hung the ironing board on the wall behind the entry door, to keep it out of the way
5. I hung a pendant lamp over the sewing table, using an Ikea Hemma light kit and a glass sconce I've had for years.  It and the sewing machines are plugged into a power strip mounted on the side of the desk so that I can turn the entire sewing table on with one button.  
6. I moved a short bookcase from the door of the room over to the corner behind the sewing desk, and moved a small dresser to the door of the room, to hold the printer and printer supplies
7. I hung new art (printed from online) over the bookcase and art table in the rear of the room

Here's the whole room, more or less, in its finished state.  It's lighter and brighter, the windows softer, the furniture balanced and the floorplan open.  I rearranged the furniture and moved that little bookshelf next to the window to balance out the art table on the right side.  I LOVE my new sewing desk, and having doors back on the closet makes a huge difference in how clean and organized the room feels. 

The desk is made from a pair of Ikea Helmer file cabinets, spray painted in "Coastal Sage" (Rustoleum American Accents), with a 2x4' birch project panel across the top - up on 1" shelf risers to make the desk height the correct height.  I've got both sewing machines, the overhead light, and the pencil sharpener and iron plugged into the power strip on the right side of the desk, so I can turn EVERYTHING on at once with the touch of a button.  

Finally, the closet doors.  There's nothing remarkable about them, except that they're finally hung (it took some doing, and I had to buy all new mounting hardware), and they CLOSE and hide all the "organized clutter" inside.  

Tada!   

New Dining Room Table

Roommate and I needed a dining room table.  We each eat in our respective comfort spaces in the living room, but we wanted to have a large space in which to work on big craft projects that don't fit in the available space in the craft room.   It took a couple of weeks of searching for the right one;  but let me to introduce you to my new $40 Craigslist special:

It's a brown-stained, bar-height table with a built-in retractable leaf which extends the tabletop out into a full square.  I've actually had three tables exactly like this in my life, so when I saw this I was like, "Hello, old friend!"  The finish isn't in the greatest shape, but I was planning on painting it anyway.

Primer

The first thing I did was cut 6” off the legs to make this a normal-height dining room table (30").  Next I gave the entire table a thorough sanding - not to remove the finish entirely, just to eliminate any protective topcoat that would keep paint from adhering, and to smooth out dings and scratches in the top surface.

For the priming coat (above) I mixed half and half Killz primer with some of the gray paint leftover from the paint job in Roommate's bedroom (done before we moved in - Previous Tenant left us all her old paint).  This gave me a tinted half-primer to use that was dark enough for the black to go over with no problem, and it used up some paint I didn't want.

Next, the entire thing got two coats of black paint (leftover from last year's Hemnes cabinet project), which is a 50% mix of semi-gloss and chalkboard paint.  Once the black was dry, the top surface and leaf got a coat of Minwax Polycrylic to give it a little extra protection.  Last but not least, I put some little felt feet onto the legs to keep them from scraping loudly across the tile.

For $40 and a little elbow grease, we now have a place to work on craft projects, cut out fabric, and serve guests at our annual Halloween party.  I suppose we could even eat at it, like normal people, if we wanted (wait what?)

You know what you don't see in any of these pictures?  Chairs.  I've got one old Ikea Kaustby (discontinued), but a dining room table needs more than one chair.  Fortunately, I found one on bulk day this year that just needs to be fixed up.  I'm on the hunt for a couple more.