Bedroom before and after... and a tip for a happy marriage!

I literally planned my bedroom around the colors in a pillow sham. We registered for our bedding at Fortunoff, a store that is no longer in business, except for outdoor furniture. Our {KING SIZED} bedding sat in storage for almost two years, since when we first got married we had a queen sized bed.

Once we bought our home, my first painting project was our bedroom.

First things first, we HAD to get rid of the horrible carpet.... and ugly cast iron heater. You can tell by looking at the wall (and fabulous window treatments that were lovingly left behind), that this was a smoker's bedroom. :(


We revealed quite a surpise under the carpet in this room! It turns out, the pine floor ends and plywood subfloor begins when an extension was added to the house, decades ago. So, refinishing the wood floor in this room wasn't an option.


First, my husband and I cleaned the walls and ceiling, and then applied two coats of primer. Since we would be eventually covering the floor with carpet, I didn't bother to use a dropcloth. The hubby got almost as much paint on the floor, as he did on the ceiling... but I was thrilled that he was helping. Needless to say, that priming job was the last of the (above basement) painting he's done.

Next, I used a laser level to tape off a stripe in the lower third of the walls to make a "chair rail illusion". The lower section I painted a tan and the top a creamy blue/green. (Naturally these are the only two paint colors that I can't seem to find my paint chips for... hopefully I won't need to touch them up before I decide to change out my bedding!)


I found carpet that I absolutely fell in love with at CarpetDepot, but was quoted what I thought was a ridiculous price. I ended up at KAS Carpet where I found the exact same carpet and paid $300 less than my original quote! YEA!


On June 16th, our King sized bedroom furniture arrived! We didn't have a whole lot of room to work with, but everything fits perfectly.




Last summer, I made a casual roman shade for one window using this fabric at Joann.


The front window I just made plain panels, and seriously wish I had my serger then! The fabric was so thick, sewing the hems was difficult on my little brother sewing machine. Oh, and notice my adorable coordinating damask fabric liner for my laundry hamper. I took off the pottery barn liner that came with the hamper and made my own pattern.



And... finally.... my tip for a happy marriage???
HIS very own hamper!!!
:)



I'm linking up to the following parties:

Needing a button?

I was contacted by Katie at impatiently praying for patience about advertising on her blog. She asked me if I had a button. Now, being fairly new to blogging, I find myself hitting "google" quite frequently to figure out a lot of the details involved in HTML. I'd really love to take a class to learn more about computer lingo one of these days. Anyhow, I ended up actually using her own blog post and blog response comments to try to figure it out myself. It actually wasn't that bad. I ended up doing two buttons, one for my ETSY shop,


<a href="http://www.curlyQdesign.etsy.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i858.photobucket.com/albums/ab150/curlyQdesign/button-for-blogger1.jpg" border="0" alt="button for blogger 6.19.10" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>

and one for my blog.

<a href="http://www.curlyQdesign.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i858.photobucket.com/albums/ab150/curlyQdesign/curlyQdesign-blog-button.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>

Feel free to grab a button and share the love!

The blog I used to walk me through it was Oikology 101. Her button is below.

What to do with dark wood paneling? Paint stripes, of course!

We closed on our home on May 15, 2008. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the people we purchased our home from were smokers and had pets... needless to say, our first priority was removing carpet and painting surfaces. Here's the journey my craft room took.


Once we had the carpet up, we discovered this red layer of paper. I think it had to be some form of adhesive for the carpet, which had probably been down for decades!



However, this room turned out amazing! The original pine floors underneath buffed and polished looked wonderful.


After one good thick coat of primer, to block stains and smells.


I took more pictures during the process of painting, but because of the wood paneling lines, I didn't need to use tape to separate my colors. I took a few days to paint each color. I started with the white, and made sure it went on the largest of the panels and then randomly chose which panels to fill in with either black or pink.


Obviously this is my "pre-sewing" days. I still need to put up crown moulding, but seem to be so busy sewing and flying, that it hasn't been a priority. I recently posted pics of my updated sewing room.

It was so overwhelming when we first moved in, but we just took it one project at a time. It sure keeps us busy.

I'm linking up to the following parties: