Cozy Master Bedroom

This room used to be Noah and Toby's room.  A few years ago we decided to move all three boys into the same bedroom and it made sense for them to be in the biggest room.   At first we moved into the other small bedroom, which used to be the nursery and this room was basically a storage shed.  But I cleaned it all out and slowly started making this room beautiful.  The nursery became the craft room and this room became...this:

The giant wave canvas is from Ikea.  I loved it from the moment I saw it and Geary bought it for me as an anniversary gift.  I love how outrageously over-scale it is for this room.  Somehow the hugeness of it makes the room feel bigger.   On my monitor, the colors of the pillow and curtain aren't showing up as vibrant as they are in real life.  They are closer to the bright aqua color of the center of the wave.

See how the left side of the bamboo shades have light shining through them?  That's because there really is a window behind the shades on that side.  The other side is just wall.  But I wanted to have the bed centered on the window so I made the window "bigger."  In real life, the light shining through isn't as noticeable.

The ceilings slant in this room and our old tall bed wouldn't have fit.  We sold the bed frame on Craigslist and then had our mattress and box spring on the floor while I figured out what kind of bed frame would work best.

I ended up building the bed frame and headboard myself.  Well, the bed frame was one that I found on Craiglist but by the time I was done customizing it, I may as well have built it myself.  I sawed the legs down to make the bed lower, reinforced the supports, created a new center beam, and replaced the platform bed slats.  And I painted it a deep, espresso brown.

The headboard is made from a thick sheet of plywood that I cut to fit inside the bed frame.  I covered the top part with a camping mattress.  Tip:  Buying a $20 camping mattress pad is much less expensive than purchasing the same amount of foam from a craft store.  Even with a 50% off coupon.  Then I covered the foam with a layer of batting and then a layer of natural cotton.  I covered my own buttons and tufted the headboard and it is very comfortable!  I chose to have the headboard inside the bed frame because I wanted it to overlap our mattress by a couple of inches.  I used to always lose my pillows in the small space between our bed and the wall and this ensures that that never happens.

I also made the faux capiz shell chandelier.  It's made from embroidery hoops and wax paper circles.  The method I used was to iron three sheets of wax paper together to the get the thickness I wanted.  Then I used a circle punch to cut out 87 million(ish) circles.  I sewed the circles together and glued them to the inside rims of embroidery hoops.  Then I hung them all up with fishing line.  All the paper is far away from the lightbulbs so no fire hazards here. 

It's a chandelier made out of garbage!  And I think it's beautiful.  The soft glow is perfect and the faux shells flutter and swing and I just love it.

This little dresser holds all my shoes.

It's actually this one from Ikea. But when I assembled it I had Geary cut the sides down to get rid of the open shelf on top.  I also bought different, shorter legs from Ikea and attached them with wood glue.  They don't really hold the unit up, it's screwed to the wall.

Here's the picture again so you don't have to scroll back up.  I drilled holes in the drawer fronts for beautiful turquoise pulls from Anthropologie.

Aren't they pretty with my vintage blue perfume jar?  That mirror was a hand-me-down from Emily.  It used to be green but I spray painted it white.  The color of the drawer pulls and perfume jar in this photo is what color the curtains and bed pillow are in real life.  

Here's what's reflected in the mirror.  Our wedding vows are superimposed over the photographs.  There is a full length mirror on the back of our door.  The paint color is a custom mix of a bunch of paint we had leftover from other projects.  At first I was annoyed that the sheen came out glossy, but now I really like it.  It reflects light and just kind of feels right for this beachy bedroom.

I made our nightstands out of those cheap little cubbie boxes you can find at big box store.  I removed the tops of the cubbies and replaced them with stained wood.  They are tiny and perfect for holding bronze pharmacy lamps and our alarm clocks.  And books, of course!

You can kind of see my rubbish bin in the bottom left corner.  It's just a regular plastic bin from Target that I covered with sisal rope.  Oh, and you can really see here how the chandelier is not centered over the bed.  Oh well, you can't win them all!

Our bedroom is tiny, but we love the coziness and the whole feel of the room.  It's peaceful and quiet but still vibrant and full of life.   And someday I'll get around to ironing my duvet cover.  Yeah...probably not!

Thanks for taking my little bedroom tour!  I hope you enjoyed it as much I have enjoyed putting this room together and that it was worth the wait.