A Bedroom Makeover

We’ve had a very productive weekend, although I feel like I need another weekend so that I can have a little time for doing nothing!  We made another step forward in our house-beautification project.  I tackled our bedroom, and now we’re wishing we had done this years ago.  When we moved in, the bedroom was in desperate need of a paint job.  And for some reason, we picked a paint that was somewhere between light pink and off-white.  We painted the walls and trim the same color, and while it wasn’t horrible (like the mauve bathroom) it wasn’t particularly great either.  Add to that our random assortment of art, and a length of wood with nails in it that I had hung on the wall to hold my jewelry (I told you I’m low maintenance!).

Anyway, our bedroom got a makeover this weekend.  The walls are now a wonderful brown shade, and the trim is white.  We took down the faded plastic 1985 blinds and put up wooden blinds that we got at Home Depot.  (as an aside, I remember talking to a friend who had a window person come in and install wooden blinds in her house.  They look identical to what we have, and she said they paid about $2000 to have it done.  If you’re willing to install your own blinds and shorten them to the correct length, places like Home Depot will cut them to the right width for you and the overall cost is far lower than having them installed by someone else.  The blinds in our bedroom took us about 20 minutes to install this evening, and it will take us about 10 minutes to shorten them.  We’ve paid about $375 for blinds for six windows, which is all we need – the rest of the windows have curtains).

Our bedroom makeover cost about $130 and took the better part of a weekend.  We bought two gallons of VOC-free paint (I will never use any other kind.  Painting and not having a slightly sick feeling is priceless), a thrift store picture, and new blinds.  The trim paint was left over from another project.  We still have about half a gallon of wall paint left over, which will be perfect for an accent wall somewhere.  And the improved look of our room is not only great for us, but it should be a big help once we put our house on the market.

Here is a picture of our bedroom now.  I love how the bed looks without a bed frame taking up space.  I forgot to take "before" pictures, but you can use your imagination:

 

That picture over the bed came from a very productive thrift store trip we made yesterday morning.  It was $12, and makes the room feel much classier than the random art we had on the walls before.  Over on the dresser you can see a little wooden box.  That’s my new jewelry box, which is a step up from the piece of wood with nails in it that used to hang over the dresser.

I found the jewelry box at one of my favorite thrift stores yesterday.  It was marked $18, but it was half price day, so I got it for $9.  It was perfect timing, because I had just taken down my improvised jewelry rack, and had all my jewelry piled on the bed.  Now it has a home.  I love thrift stores.

My husband found a great toy for our son while we were thrifting yesterday:

It’s a keyboard, and our little guy loves it.  He had a great time banging away on the piano last time we were at my parents’ house.  Since we’re not likely to get a piano anytime soon, we had been looking out for a keyboard for him.  This one is battery operated, but we have rechargeable batteries and a charger.  I’m not sure which of the three of us has had the most fun with this thing so far, but we’ll say that it’s our son’s keyboard….

I was reading some other blogs just now, and I came across this post from Frugal Zeitgeist.  She included a link to the Hyper Homemaker, and I’ve been happily browsing that site.  I’m not even close to as clean and organized as the Hyper Housewife, but I am very inspired by her site.  If you’re looking for some motivation to clean, look no further.  I think I will even be washing windows soon…

I also checked in on Alissa at On Purpose Living.  Her baby is due any day now, and I absolutely love this post about how she had cloth diapers all packed to take to the hospital.  All the best Alissa, and we’ll be checking back soon to see your updates about the new little one!