Master Bedroom Revamp!

Back in January I mentioned that after 2 and a half years I finally decided to tackle our "master bedroom". It isn't really a master, its just got the better windows than the other bedroom, there is no on-suit or walk in closet. But hey, saying it's a master bedroom makes me feel a little grown up :)

Anyway,  I was finally ready to make this room be a place I enjoyed. We had moved furniture around multiple times and I had even painted the walls but I never attempted to make it look like anything special. With a few minor tweaks and a teeny tiny budget I was able to take our hodge-podge college-esque room and make it feel like adults live in it.

The first part of that revamp involved figuring out a space to put all of our clothes and shoes. Like I said before there is no walk-in closet so I have the one closet in the room, Reed has the one in the guest room and before we had a metal rod that Reed hung his work clothes on. Not so pretty.... 

These built-ins where a hassle because we didn't really plan super well, but they are a god send now!!  (Just check out this before picture... ugh horrible.)

After we got the built-ins in place I realized I needed a new bedside table. I just didn't have enough space between the bed and the built-ins. So this lovely galvanized tray turned hanging table was perrrfecct! 

Then I needed to make our furniture match. This dresser is one we've had since Reeds high-school days but it was kinda orange and didn't match the stain on the bed or the new built-ins. So I fixed that one lovely afternoon with a can of paint and stain :) Now it may possibly be my favorite piece of furniture in the house.

 Last but certainly not least, we got new bedding. I found this lovely ruffle quilt set online, to be honest it wasn't exactly what I wanted. It's more dingy than ivory, but hey it hides Tepes hair and dirty paws quite well :) And now I get to enjoy my room. All the little details fit, and it's a space I feel like belongs to the rest of our house.

It may not be a big room, it may not have a walk-in closet or on-suit, but it fits us well. It's a lovely "first" master bedroom. I'm sure it will be changed again before we leave this house but for now I'm extremely happy and so proud of us for finally finishing moving in after almost three years :)

PS> Check out these links for the posts on each one of the projects that completed this Master Bedroom Revamp! 

Vol. 1 -Dresser Makeover 

Vol. 2 - DIY Hanging Bedside Table 

Vol. 3- DIY Built-Ins 

DIY Built-Ins - Master Bedroom Revamp Vol. 3

Y'all, this was the first project Reed and I tackled in 2015 and it took me this long to getting around to photographing it.... I don't understand why I couldn't get it going earlier, actually I do, it's called avoiding cleaning the room :) oops 

But all that aside, our master bedroom revamp is pretty much complete!! I still have a few details I'm working on but everything is in it's place and lookin lovely! This post is a semi tutorial on how we made these lovely built ins to hold some of Reeds clothes that don't fit in the closet. 

I started off with this fabulous design in my head of a wall of lovely white and dark stain built-ins with lovely high heels and cow boy boots displayed on the shelves. Then I realized how stupidly pricey that dream was... I was tryin to do this project for under $100. Crazy right. NOT! 

I purchased 4 bookcases from Home Depot Online and stacked them. This gave us the frame and shelving for most of our project. However, because we wanted to hang clothes in parts of this we needed the bookcases to be deeper. 

This means we just left the back off of the top bookcase, pulled it away from the wall, and secured the stacked pieces to the wall. We then had a gap between the wall and bookcase and just covered it with a strip of wood. This also allowed the pieces to look more cohesive instead of two stacked bookcases :) 

Next we built my favorite part of the entire system. The doors! We used the same thin board as the sides of the bookcases and cut them to cover the closet section of each bookcase. We stained them and added molding to trim out the doors and give them a more finished look. 

We thought we were done after that but then Reed moved in all his stuff and we realized he had WAY more clothes than we thought. So we added shelving to the his side of the built in system. Along with a shelf running under the window connecting the two units :) 

Then my favorite puppy in the entire world decided she wanted me to pay more attention to her instead of the built-in unit....

 As every good decorating addict knows it's all in the details. I had decided we needed some help organzing this open shelf system. I also have a love affair with galvanized metal. It's like my all time favorite thing. So I found these AMAZING laundry hampers at Ross Dress For Less for $18 each. I couldn't not get them... And I went to Tractor Supply to pick up the galvanized buckets that now hold our socks and undies :)

I can't get over how much better I feel in our bedroom now. I mean even though you can still see most of Reeds clothes, they have a place and usually he keeps them pretty neat. I thought about staging his clothes to look super organized and beautiful, but then I realized "wait, Reed works on a ranch his clothes will never be organized and beautiful" so I just decided to go with real life instead of faking it, hope y'all don't care :)

And those curtains (not totally done) I made them in about 15 minutes before my in-laws arrived. They are a $5 bed sheet and pom pom fringe. I'll be sharing those in a little while, ya know like when I get them on a real curtain rod... 

Y'all. 

You don't even know how much better this room is compared to what it was. Like Reed and I decided to be grown ups and have a bedroom that looks like adults live in it. Sorry it wasn't really a great tutorial. I attempted to take pictures but realized that we didn't really know what we were doing so my tutorial would have been more of a "do as I say not as I do" kinda deal. 

Our master bedroom revamp is almost done!!
Check out these other 2 installments to see some of the progress :)
Vol. 1- Dresser Revamp
Vol. 2 -DIY Hanging Bedside Table 

Have y'all revamped a room in your house lately? If so I wanna hear about it!

Master Bedroom Makeover vol. 1 - Dresser Revamp

Y'all, this is the longest Reed and I have lived in a single home. I mean it's only our second house together and it still isn't "ours" but we've been here almost two years so it's like time to make this thing "finished". And by finished I mean all of those "we just moved in half done projects" need to be checked off. And don't judge me, yes we have been here over a year and a half and I still have a couple of those projects laying around...

Our "master" bedroom (just one of the two bedrooms in the house, nothing "master" about it) was never finished. We kinda just threw our furniture and clothes in and said TA DA a bedroom!

I had a big list of things I wanted to do to this room and the first one was make our furniture "match". We still have our hand me downs cheap or free furniture and we love it. I'm not the type of person that wants to go buy a bedroom suit. I would rather find a really cool bed, a rad dresser, and whatever else just slowly collect to make my space perfect. So I didn't really mind the mismatch but at the same time it was just not put together. We had like 5 different wood stains going on and I just couldn't handle it any more! 

So for Vol. 1 of our bedroom makeover was to get our furniture to look like it at least belongs in the same space! That meant I needed to refinish the dresser to match the bed. (Love the bed. It was a gift and so we decided to center the room after its name sake, the bed.)

Luckily the mirror I had matched the finish of our bed so seriously it was just refinishing this super simple dresser. The stain I used was Red Mahogany by Minwax and painted the frame with Ivory Dust by Valspar. Seriously, like the simplest thing ever. I lightly sanded and applied the stain or paint and DONE. But as you can tell in the before and after it made a HUGE difference. No more orangey wood that didn't fit with anything I had, at all. 

Basically I'm pretty happy with it and am excited about how easy and life changing (yes, I know so dramatic but hey it's January) Vol. 1 of our makeover has been. 

I keep saying Vol. 1 so maybe if you are like real interested in my life you may be wondering what the other Volumes will be. Well, in the pictures above you can see part of Vol. 2! One of our biggest struggles with this house is lack of storage and we basically had stuff falling all over the place. So we have built a shelving unit along one of our bedroom walls. It's a slow process because we are kinda making it up as we go. Basically I didn't realize how many shelves Reed was gonna need for t-shirts and hats so it's taking longer than I thought ha. 

I wanted to throw in this picture because I felt like I was lying to you in some of my pictures of my dresser. Our room looked so uncluttered and fresh. Well if I turned to capture the other half of the room this is what it looked like.... all my clothes on the floor cause I didn't put them back in the dresser yet, 2 dog beds, and a boot dryer. Perfect blog material :) What are some of your undone projects you are hoping to check off the list this year?? 

Pallet Lamp

**This post was originally posted in October at Confessions of a Northern Belle

Today I wanted to share a project that has been long in the making.
Ever since I moved out to the boondocks of South Carolina I have had loads of free time which means basically everything I own is getting a makeover sooner or later. It also means that I've been able to find lots of cool things to repurpose around our house/land. One thing I didn't notice in our last house was our lack of lamps. I had 1 table lamp, 1 desk lamp, and 1 hanging lamp. Totally not enough lamps right! So the first projects on my todo list have been to find unique lamps for our boondocks house.  Lamps are so hard to come by, well not hard to find but hard to find at a price I was willing to pay. [I'm super frugal, it's hard for me to purchase anything specially if I think I could possibly make it on my own]. It took me forever but I finally just broke down and said I would make my own lamps. The first one I made was out of an old gas can that we found in the yard shortly after moving in. You can see the tutorial for that one here.

Now I'm going to share with you the other lamp design I came up with a while ago and am JUST now getting around to making. [I know slacker, I've had time I just get too anxious sometimes].

This particular lamp is made from an old pallet that I've been robbing wood from for other projects. I've used it to attempt to make a dog bed, that didn't work so I took it apart and made some artwork for our bathroom. Now I've got a few other projects in place but right now lets talk about my pallet lamp base.

First things first is you have to take the pallet apart. If you read the post about that failed dog bed you found out how much I hate taking apart pallets. So I just cut it, no hitting, hammering or prying needed :) I cut the boards as close to the supports as I could so that I had some length to work with later, but I didn't worry too much about it because I knew I didn't want the lamp to be to large.

Then I took the pieces in to the studio and used my handy dandy new miter saw to make some simple 45 degree angle cuts. Originally I was going to just build a box with out the angles and just glue and screw the boards together. But once I was blessed with this saw I figured this would be a great project to use it on. And when you use angle cuts it automatically makes the "box" shape more sturdy with out adding in supports in the corners.

After making sure all the cuts fit together I simple put two screws in each corner to hold it all together. I was very surprised with how simple this part was. I thought for sure I was going to split the wood because I couldn't hold it in place or something. But luckily it balanced well and allowed me to simple finish my task :) I love it when things go so smoothly!

Once the box frame was finished all I had to do was add the lamp kit! I got the kit from Lowes, it works great but let me warn you the directions are no fun! If you read the post about the gas can lamp, I give a step by step tutorial on how to put the kit together. And even after putting together multiple kits and even writing my own tutorial it still took me multiple tries to get it just right! Lamp kits are tricky but they sure do allow you to do a lot with your decorative lighting!

While I was at Lowes getting the lamp kit I checked their lamp shade section and they had this barrel shade on clearance for $7! I snatched it up and placed it on the lamp just to see how it fits. Now it doesn't really go with the other fabrics in the room so I decided to cover it with something different. But it stayed like this for a little while... Oops!

And see that side table the lamp is sitting on? I was super productive the day I made the lamp and also redid both of our side tables! This particular side table is 2 side tables cut down, repainted, and stacked to make one that fit the hight of our bed :) You can check that out here if you wanna see that transformation.

Ta-Da!! This entire lamp cost me less than $20 and no more than an hour to make! I was so surprised and super happy with how smooth this project went, if I had realized how easy it would be I would have done it months ago! But lucky for you I'm an over thinker and procrastinator so I waited until now and got to share with all y'all! 

I just wanted to thank Catalyn for letting me guest post at her precious blog! I've really enjoyed getting to know Catalyn and see her little belly grow! And I hope that you guys will come visit my blog and catch up on some other projects down the road. DIY is a constant around our house and right now I am setting up my craft room and my studio out side so there is so much to look at! Again, thank you Catalyn for giving me this chance and sharing your gorgeous readers with me :) 

I tried to make curtains once...

Friday Friday Fridayyyyyy! In just a few days my brother and sister in law are coming to visit and bringing the most precious nephew in the whole world. I'm a bit excited!

So, of course visitors mean I'm spending my time trying to get all my little projects finished. Yep that means, all those half done things that I've been living with "until I get around to them" need to at least be looked at :)

Well, I made this "curtain", if you even wanna call it that, back in August I think. I just used no-sew tape, a drop cloth, and acrylic paint. Well, I would show you a tutorial but as you can see it hasn't held up very well...

I'm guessing no sew tape doesn't go well with yanking, or cold temperatures. Just recently, right after that arctic blast, the curtain decided to just fall apart. You could tell from the beginning that I didn't really "take my time" and do it correctly that seam was pretty wonky, and you can still see pencil marks from my sketch.

I like the idea behind the curtain so maybe this isn't a complete fail. I can probably salvage it with adding some weight to it with lining and I've got a sewing machine so I will be able actually sew it this time! Maybe ironing will help some too :)

Also, I felt a bit guilting for how "good" this part of our bedroom looked. It doesn't always look this way. Actually it hasn't ever looked this way until just now :) I've still got LOTS  to do to our bedroom as far as figuring out storage. Here is a picture of everything that usually sits below the window...

Yes that is a laundry hamper with clothes piled on top. Boots. Jackets. Bathrobes. Boot dryer. Space heater. Ya know, the works :)

Maybe one day I will get around to all these little half done projects. Sometimes it blows my mind that I can stay at home all the time and there are still projects like this in every room. I mean seriously, what do I do with my time?!

Lamp Shade Recovering with a Drop Cloth Scrap

Well well well! The bedroom has gotten lots of attention this week!
Not only have I made the bed every day this week but I've put away all of my fall/winter clothes, sorta unpacked my shoes (hid the boxes), refinished 2 side tables, built a lamp, and now recovered the mismatched lamp shade!
It sounds like a lot but really the cleaning and bed making was solely because I had to clean up for the photos of the new projects :)

So Wednesday I shared our bedside table makeovers. Super simple paint job but really did help in making the room feel a little more finished!
And today I not only wrote a post about the fabulous lampshade I just recovered but also wrote a guest post on how I built this custom lamp!! I'm not 100% sure when the post will be live (I'll let y'all know fo sho) but go check out Confessions of a Northern Belle and I promise her little blog will not disappoint :)

Until then here is the "tutorial" of how I fixed our mismatched lampshade.
I shared this photo in the post about the lamp so sorry if you are disappointed with the doubling up. The projects go hand in hand so I just recycled :)
The barrel shade I picked up at Lowes on clearance for $7! I should have gotten another one, but thought I would try out my recovering skills first. I don't think the shade looks bad, it just doesn't really go with the other patterns in the room.

First things first, I had to pick out what I was going to recover the shade with. I was originally planning on using the drop cloth, in fact I bought drop cloth forever ago with making a lampshade in mind but am just now using it for that. But I also found an old pillow case that I thought might look good. So I held them against the wall and the bed spread and the drop cloth won out. I liked the pillow case, but felt like that was a lot of gray between the walls, table, and shade. 

Once I decided on the fabric I measured and cut. Sadly I mis measured. But instead of getting rid of the scrap I just cut another piece and tacked it in place where the short coming was. 

Because the shade was an angled barrel it wasn't so much a "mis measure" but that I couldn't cover lamp the fabric and keep it taught against the shade with out some kind of odd lines. I felt this was an easy solution. And I can just put the weird seam at the back where no one sees it :) 

After hot glueing the end pieces in place and making sure they were tight I started around the rim. I did the bottom of the shade first and just glued a few spots being sure to pull it tight so that there were no wrinkles. 

Then when I got to the top part with the rungs I had to cut slits in the fabric in order to make it sit smoothly along the top of the shade. I then glued around the rim, again pulling tight and watching for wrinkles.

And that was it! Simple and took under 20 minutes! But once I put it back on the lamp and turned the bulb on I noticed that you can still see the pattern and the remaining fabric on the inside. This will probably end up bugging me more than I think but really no one is gonna see the lamp shade, much less when its on! It is in the bedroom and we don't have many visitors so as long as I like it thats all that matters :) And I think when the light is off it couldn't be more perfect! 

So there it is! My refinished bedside table, my custom built lamp, and a recovered lampshade! Man the past few days have been productive! Now I feel like next week I can tackle the rest of the room and will be ready to reveal the boondocks bedroom tour sooner than I expected! Maybe the house will get done before the Holidays after all!! Woooo Hoo! 

*I will be sure to update this posts with links once the guest post on the lamp build goes live!

**Also, don't forget if you wanna see where I link up and party go check the side bar Party tab! >>>