Master Bedroom Updates

You've heard me talk about it before in this post, but so often the master bedroom is last on the list of things to get done. Rooms that guests see always get done first - the kitchen, bathrooms, and living room. And of course you want your kids to have awesome rooms. Then last but not least comes your private oasis. The room where you should be relaxing in. A quiet place to escape the chaos of the rest of the house.

If you're anything like me, the master bedroom gets forgotten about... until it's 10:00pm and you start thinking about what color to change the walls or what pictures would make you feel most at peace. No?? Just me?? I am a little crazy like that. :)

I vowed to make the master bedroom a priority when we moved into our home in February. I never even touched the master bedroom in our last house and it wasn't a room I was excited to be in. Now with the baby coming I want to get this room done so I can be excited about it. Plus after 5 1/2 years of marriage, I am ready to have a real adult room instead of a room that's pieced together with broken craigslist furniture and color schemes that don't make sense.

You'll have to excuse the pictures. I've done the best I can but this room has awful lighting for some reason. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to capture this room.

Let's start off with how it looked before we moved in. Dark purple walls. And you can see they didn't even do a good job at painting! It was dark and depressing.

Our master bedroom is actually made up of 4 rooms. The main room where the bed is, a little area that I will be using for my make up station once we get it ready, a walk in closet and a nice huge bathroom (that scares me to death and we have closed the door and not gone in there since we moved in! That renovation will happen down the road). But I'll show you those spaces later on because I really haven't touched them yet.

I decided to paint our master bedroom something other than gray... GASP!! I know, that's a little crazy isn't it?! I have seen Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams used in many master bedrooms before and thought it would be the perfect pop of color. Isn't this a beautiful bluish/gray color?



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Well, it is a beautiful color in the RIGHT LIGHTING. I even put up a few samples on the wall and really thought this would be the color. We have 1 pretty big window in this room but like I said, the lighting is really off in here and it makes Comfort Gray look like Comfort GREEN! Which of course didn't hit me until after we moved in.


 

We also had the carpet replaced before we moved in. Before it was blue with animal feces all over... GAG! Now it is a beautiful gray color.

The pictures above are being nice. It looks way more green in person and it's just awful when it's dark out. Pure green. No hint of gray or blue anywhere. If it was a blue/gray color I would have loved it and been happy. But I have lived with "Comfort Green" for 4 months and it's time to go.

I had a sample of Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore because it was one I considered for our main level (ultimately I went with Balboa Mist for the main level). So I plopped it on our master bedroom walls as well as baby's nursery and I love it.

So this room will hopefully soon be Gray Owl.

Let's look at a few more pictures after we moved in. I have my awesome $35 chair in here. Which totally doesn't match but I love it in here anyways. The nightstands we got just two years ago when we moved into our last house. They were online at WalMart for around $60 for two. I hate them. Too short, too small and are fake wood. At that point in my life I was about to have a newborn and a 16 month old so decorating was far from my mind. Live and learn my friends.

Then there's the old lamp that really needs to be donated but keeps making its way around the house when needed. It's like 15 years old and does not match anything in my home.

My make up station all lonely over there by itself. To the right you can see part of my craigslist dresser that I had to get when we first got married. It wasn't supposed to last this long and actually did break in this last move. Praise the Lord! It is also fake wood.

Here's where things start to change. It started with 2 lamps from Target. White, bright and a fun pattern.

Although mine wouldn't fit on my teeny tiny nightstand. It's not like I have a ton of stuff on there!

We took a recent trip to IKEA and I pointed out to my hubby that the MALM line was on sale. I have seen hacks of these dressers and nightstands online before that knew that these would work.

At first I thought they would be too big but after living with them for a few weeks they are the perfect size. And really, we do have the room!

I was able to fit all of my clothes in these and get rid of that yucky old dresser.

I still have dreams of my hubby building me a desk but for now we brought up one we weren't using from the basement. I have been wanting one to use for my blogging and it made the most sense to put it in here. Yup, real life with the laundry basket on my chair. :)

Next up on the list is changing the bed. While I wish we could get a king sized bed, it just isn't in the budget right now. I have been dreaming of an upholstered headboard for quite some time now and convinced Hubby that I could make it for around $100. I am hoping to make up some or most of that cost from selling the current frame as well as the old nightstands.

I can't wait to update you on the progress as soon as it happens!

Master Bedroom Wall Inspiration

It's probably not true for everyone, but I know for a lot of parents the master bedroom is one of the last rooms to get painted, decorated, and finished. Kids take priority, other rooms in the house take priority (like the ones your guests will see), and life just gets in the way.

I am making it my mission in our new home to take the time and make our master bedroom a retreat. A place where we can go after the kids are asleep to relax and unwind. It seems like as parents we put ourselves last but I really believe we should have our own special room in the house that brings us peace.

In our first house (before kids), we were able to make our master bedroom our own with Craigslist furniture. Although I never got around to hanging any pictures on the walls. I know, I know... it's brown!

In our second home, I did not touch the master bedroom until about 2 months before we moved! I wanted it to look nice for showings and that's all the time I had to spend on it while we lived there. It never got pictures on the walls either.

This is before we moved in. An older couple lived here for a long time and didn't do much to keep it up to date.

Here it is after I finally took off that wallpaper border and painted it 2 years later. The color is Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore. A greige color that is a perfect neutral for anyone to fall in love with.

I have painted our bedroom now with Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams. I have a love-hate relationship with it. In the daytime it's a beautiful color mixed with blues-greens-grays. When it gets dark outside, it's plain old green. Since the rest of our house is pretty neutral, I figured I would make our bedroom bold (at least for me anyway).

At first I wanted to paint it gray. Totally insane I tell you! So I'm living with this color for now but have fallen in love with a few ways to make it unique. I wanted to share them with you!

One of my favorites bloggers, Jen, has a similar color in her bedroom. She created a border with trim and added these awesome pictures which I totally plan on copying!

Kate at Centsational Girl did this amazing trellis wall in her bedroom. It adds a feminine effect so hopefully your husband won't mind. :)

The Nester did this diamond wall with duct tape! Did you hear see that?! DUCT TAPE!

Another one of my favorites, Thrifty Décor Chick, did this amazing board and batten wall in a beautiful dark gray color. It adds so much character. Love it!

There are so many different options for the master bedroom. I definitely want the wall behind our bed to be the focal wall so now I just have deicide which one of these is my favorite. Hopefully it takes me less than 2 years to decide, huh?!