The changes started out small and relatively insignificant:
The bottom photo shows a grey box spring bed huggy instead of a naked one.
Then the changes quickly escalated.
Behr's Dark Ash
The big changes slowed down for a bit due to our trip to the Mediterranean, a few weddings, work and life in general. So I focused on the smaller bits.
I love the bright yellow with the dark grey.
In other news, it turns out my knowledge of curtains is extremely limited, and the curtains that I bought (and loved!) were about 3' too short. Whaddya know. So then the epic search for curtains began.
While still searching for our curtains, I decided that I was ready to start getting the bigger pieces moved in. Here are before-and-after shots of our nightstands.
Here, I use the term "nightstand" fairly loosely
on my side of the bed. Let's be honest, it's a stool.
Look at those nightstands with those awesome lamps. Majestic. I
probably could have spent the extra two minutes to make the bed.
Then began the saga of the bed frame. When I was making the purchase online, I had convinced myself somehow that we had a full-size bed, when I've known for the three years we've been married that our bed is a queen. I even bought the box-spring bed huggy in the right size on the first try, thereby proving that I knew what size bed I slept in night after night.
But like I said, I convinced myself we had a full.
Then when the bed frame was delivered, I spent 3 hours putting it together with Puppy on the morning of Tuesday, August 9.
Very nice.
Except for one thing:
I cried for 20 minutes, then spent an hour hastily taking apart the bed frame, so I could put it all back in the boxes, shower, eat lunch, and make a meal for me to bring to my swing shift (3pm-11pm).
Defeated. I didn't even have time before I needed to leave
for work to dress the bed. It wasn't a good day, over all.
To continue the trend of failed bedroom-renovation events, I ended up working a series of midnight shifts before we got new curtains and resorted to this wizardry:
Yes, that's right. I resorted to taping a towel up to the window
on my side of the bed so I'd be able to sleep when I got home at
7am. It cast a delightfully eerie green glow upon the room and
gave me weird dreams, but weird dreams are better than not
being able to sleep.
A few weeks later we finally packed up the wrong bed frame and returned it, and received our new bed frame and two dressers. 10 boxes in all, and they took over our living room and dining room for a little over a week.
I finished the first dresser, and we realized that they're quite a big larger than they looked online.
Expertly built, by yours truly.
Before I got around to building Hubs' dresser, Tom, Diana and Sarah came by to take our 3rd anniversary pictures (Sarah) and to help with hang the curtains that finally arrived and were deemed perfect.
Shameless anniversary picture:
Taken on the steps of a beautiful house in Providence that was up
for sale and we were unreasonably worried that a realtor was going
to come out and we were going to have to buy this house. But would
that have been so bad, really? Yes, but only because we
enjoy things like food.
Curtains. If you think the room looks amazing now, just you wait.
That weekend, I built Hubs' dresser, and in doing so, completely destroyed our newly good-looking room.
We slept with our room in painful disarray one night...
..with his poor unfinished dresser and dresser-fillings out on top.
I filled up his dresser as I saw fit (and let's face it, it'll probably stay the way I did it forever because who actually enjoys emptying a dresser to reorganize it?), and got to work on the new bed frame, crossing my fingers that it would work.
Undressed the bed.
Removed bed-like items.
Actually I just stood the box spring and
mattress up against the opposite wall.
Of course Puppykins helped.
Common occurrences in our bedroom during the last
several months.. Church books, nice bracelets, tools.
And then- voila! A bed frame. Thank heaven. But.. does it fit?
So much satisfaction and enjoyment ran through my body
when that box spring slipped right in there ever so perfectly.
Of course, Dogly is in the middle of the photo.
I had only a few things left to do, but they wouldn't get done this day, so I made my trek to Target (where I basically live) to find something for the tops of our matching dressers that would tie the yellow in to the room. I ended up with:
His and hers matching placemats. It's the best I could do.
I think it's easy to tell which dresser is mine. That's right! It's the one with one bowl and the Knicks cologne. OK; just kidding. I found nice little bowls that have been an excellent place to corral bracelets, earrings, and rings, and I also have my Certification Corvette, as well as a few watches. Hubs' dresser is a little less decorative. The placemat is really just acting as a location to put his pocket-things at the end of the day- his change, receipts, other random things. I tried to not decorate his in a way that he'd find ridiculous, and I was pleased when one of the first things he said was that he really liked the matching placemats!
Then finally, earlier this week, Tom came over to do the last of the hanging. He expertly hung a mirror *on the wall* over our bed, and hung up the curtain pulls.
A final picture:
TL;DR:
Before and after.
The to-do list:
Done.
I'd like to send a huge shout-out and thank you to my in-laws for helping in so many ways- from finding suitable curtains, to hanging those curtains and more.
** Paint color: Behr Dark Ash 770F-5
** Yellow Storage Bench: Target (though they seriously jacked up the price since we bought ours in April)
** Yellow Lamps: Target
** Nightstands: Ikea
** Dressers: Ikea
** Bed Frame: Ikea
