One Room Challenge: Our DIY-FILLED Bedroom Reveal

First thing first – jumps on bed.*

Ah, yep. I needed that. We worked up to the very last minute to finish our room in time for the One Room Challenge reveals and this bed is calling my name! More so than before, if ya know what I mean (it’s purtaay). But of course, I shall tell you all about the deets and tails beforehand and let you in on more than just the new pretty pictures of this space! 

Let’s get to the goodness…

 

*Click here for the first week of the One Room Challenge to catch up!

The 2 before-s:

1. Painting

Our first step was a simple one: finish the painting that never actually got finished, heh. We remodeled our place before moving in but that was all basics and that’s about it. The stuff that actually brings in character and personality into a home like wallpaper, wainscoting, furniture, etc;  that’s all what we’re trying to accomplish now. Good thing too because wow, my home style is evolving! I’ve always heard designers say that it’s good to live in a home for a little to get a feel of the place before deciding on the final touches. I found that to be totally true. Especially for all the indecisive people out there that are like me, because we change our minds a million miles a minute. But anyway, that brings me back to the painting…after living with the tongue and groove wall being the only blue color in the space, it dawned on me that I actually really don’t like an accent wall to be a different/random color. So to fix that situation, we took that same accent color to the rest of the space but only about 65% up the walls. I didn’t want the entire space to be blue so painting part of the walls was a good solution. I randomly chose the blue shade for the tongue and groove over 2 years ago because the white shiplap trend was taking over everywhere and I just really wanted something different. That’s actually one of the reasons on why I went vertical instead of horizontal as it was pretty much unknown to have vertical “shiplap”. Not as much now but that’s okay, I still love it to this day!

2. Refurbishing a Secondhand Dresser

Gosh, don’t even get me started on this dresser…see this moodboard? Yea, that dresser isn’t green like it is now. It was supposed to be restained but we came across every single problem imaginable. More on that here. And then why we even painted it green is all explained here, in it’s own post – and I absolutely love the color. It did, however, mess me up in all kinds of ways because that meant that my final details would be different than what I had in mind. Details stress me out because they matter! Like I mentioned, I’m obsessed with the color and it looks even better when the soft glow from the lamps shine on it. It’s the perfect shade. Can you believe that I mixed different colors of leftover paint that we had? It was a good call, despite the 3+ hours that it took me! But now that we didn’t have a “wooden” dresser, I had to play around with where else I can bring in wood tones into the room to warm up the blue walls.

3. Making Our Headboard

Ahhhh, our wonderful DIY headboard, to which I would say was the easiest DIY of all. I mean, minus the sewing part – I didn’t do that, heh. My wonderful mother in law did as I know zero, zilch, nada, about sewing. I want to learn one of these days…one of these days….we’ll see. Although we went with a white linen (how dare we), it completely brings in a vibe to the whole space. How dare we not go white?! Our little secret is that we made our linen cover to be removable from the headboard so that I could wash it when need be. We’re not the cleanest and most careful family and with me having eczema that bleeds and whatnot, something could be bound to happen. Let’s hope not but just in case! I didn’t want to wait for a beautiful, all white bed for much longer. The lumbar pillow was also made by my mother in law (after I asked ever so sweetly) and I think that it adds the “fancy” pop to the bed. In our family, we can’t do millions of decorative pillows (on the floor) so one lumbar pillow does the job perfectly.

4. Building Our Nightstands

Well these were a nightmare. A good one, but still a nightmare. Building these nightstands was a huge learning curve (for our marriage AND building), but in the end: they’re are beaut-i-ful. Totally worth it. We’re not rich people and I can’t always have what I want but I do have some ideas and Leo does have the mooscles and the math brains. Put all that together and you get these bad boys. And possibly a stronger marriage? 😉 I was wanting to create a tutorial on how we made the nightstands but to be honest, that kinda seems nearly impossible to put on pen and paper (well laptop). There’s so much that goes into it, more that meets the eyes. Like I thought it would go so much smoother and faster – boy, was I wrong. There will always be hiccups here and there no matter how hard you try to avoid them. I mean, unless you’ve been building furniture for a living for like, ever now. Us two, we’re just regular ole’ DIYers that want more out of life. Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t, but dang I’m proud of us! I do think that it could be better and more “everything has to be equally aligned and stained perfectly” but don’t get me wrong, I’m a perfectionist and every little thing that shouldn’t be there is like an arrow into my heart. Learning on dealing with that because like I said, some things are unavoidable. However, I still wanna put together a little video on how we built the nightstands so look out for that! Now – I know there are a lot of caning furniture out there but I hope nothing like ours – I designed these from scratch and Leo built them so finding a copycat that we could’ve just bought from a big box company kinda takes the spark away, ya know? But seriously, don’t they look good?! 

Hmmm, I’m realizing that our headboard looks big compared to the bed platform….welp,  guess we gotta fix that because that’s gonna bother me, heh. We’ll probably ending up just adding wooden boards to bring out the frame – let’s see what the hubby thinks! See, we mess up all the time too…nervous laugh.*

5. Bringing Function In

This handy little wall decor are actually hooks. Pretty cool, right?! I wanted something outside the average hooks and was inspired by one that was sold by Urban Outfitters. I got a lot of positive feedback on these and I can’t wait to show you how they can be made! Purses on the floor and random hats all over the place? Not anymore!! 😉 I wanted to paint them graffiti like because I thought that would be super cool but I do love the minimalist approach also! Perhaps you could? I’d love to see!

6. Creating the Perfect Bedroom Corner (updated)

This chair from Article was the perfect touch to finish this corner of the bedroom so that it’s functional and beautiful at the same time. We couldn’t have anything too bulky as we still needed to get to the slide door on the left side of the chair. The lamp was moved back here as I love the height that it adds which brings more attention to our personal Instax pictures above. Instead of having the side table here, I decided to move that away to make room for these two pieces leaning against the wall. The gold frame that we added to the otherwise plain canvas brings in more detail. Also, Leo wants to learn sign language so this casual sing language poster was a must!

Here’s the previous shot – that mirror just got moved the wall between the bathroom and closet, where I like to blow dry my hair lol.

LET”S TALK ABOUT THAT FLOOR LAMP. 

The lamp was the secret project that Leo and I decided to make. I can’t even. A lamp!? Yep, we made a lamp. First time ever. Okay, we actually didn’t have time to wire it before the reveal but we’re getting on that asap. You better believe that I’ll be turning it on everyday; I’m a big time dim lighting kinda girl 😉 I actually drew up so many different designs for a floor lamp and totally want to make them all but Leo and I actually settled on something completely different last minute. Like 3 days ago, last minute (nervous laugh). I’ll get into it later when I post an awesome video tutorial but for now – just look at it ♥.

Also a last minute thing – that tri-fold mirror! I had a tough time choosing between an irregular shaped mirror for on top of the dresser or a floor mirror made up of thin slivers. You know which one I was leaning towards? Nope! I was actually about to find out the cost of getting a custom mirror cut into a cool squiggly shape from one of Leo’s guys, but than Leo remembered about the some long pieces sitting in the garage (sometimes we end up with things that other builders/owners throw away, old or new!). Turns out the sizes of them was almost exactly what I wanted so here we are – another DIY added to the list! Phew, why do we do this to ourselves, LOL. Almost free-ish stuff is nice but making it pretty is the challenging part!

Check out all the other reveals for the ORC here

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