Master Bedroom Makeover

So, it's taken a month or two but I've finally (almost) finished updating the master bedroom. We've lived in the house since 2004 and I never painted our bedroom. The color wasn't horrible, sort of a yellowy-beige, but it was kind of dull and boring. Then, thanks to our neighbors hacking down a huge maple tree in front of our house, the blazing afternoon sun began bleaching out my curtains and the coverlet on the bed. I bought them at Pottery Barn a few years ago and still love them, but I am kind of ready for a change.

BEFORE

I have pretty decent bedroom furniture. It's only a few years old. 

I have lots of decorative items that I can work into the new plan. My lamps are neutral. The art on the walls is neutral. Unfortunately, despite the small size of my room (and the lack of storage anywhere else in my house for ANYTHING), all this furniture has to stay where it is. It's an insane amount of furniture for a small space.

That bookcase on the left is here temporarily, but that may be "temporary" for 6 months to a year, not one week sort of temporary. I plan to paint it and move it into my son's room.

Those funny hanging things at the top of the photo are the ceiling fan pulls (I should have cropped those out of the photo!).

Until I can get down to NC and scour the furniture outlets, this white marble topped table is my nightstand. I need to find one to go with the rest of the bedroom furniture (Broyhill's Charlestowne line...which is no longer in production).  It was a table I had down in the basement, that happened to be same height as the other nightstand.

INSPIRATION

I started mulling over color schemes back in August and pinned some lovely bedroom inspiration over at Pinterest. I noticed that most of the rooms I liked had grey walls. So thinking grey and knowing that I have entire room of dark furniture, along with little money to do anything along the lines of a total re-do, I started coming up with ideas to use things that I already have. Then lo and behold I received a Ballard Designs  Catalog in the mail about a month ago and saw these:

Lots of grey and dark browns. Not what you expect to be paired with gray. Also a little white. I like the addition of the terra cotta/rust color but I kind of have that going on downstairs already. 

Another good mix of unsuspecting neutrals with a pop of color.

But it was this color scheme that caught my eye, because I knew I could make it happen on a budget (more on that here).

I also noticed similar color palates in Crate & Barrel's most recent catalog:

So here is where I went with all of this:

AFTER

I painted the walls Graceful Gray (Behr paint). It looks a little darker here than it is in real life. In person it looks more like the gray shown on the walls in the Ballard Designs catalog pages above (they obviously have a much better staff photographer).

I found these pillows at HomeGoods. The front pillow has a pretty mix of gray and light aqua. The two rectangular pillows are a sage velvet. I purchased the white duvet and cover at Ikea (Alvine Stra). I already had the sage pillowcases and the aqua throw I used on the end of the bed.

I painted the metal wall hanging, that was off-white and hanging above the bed in the "before"
photos, Oil Rubbed Bronze.  I hung it above the dresser and then placed
the Anthropologie-inspired piece I made a few weeks ago in front of it. 

Nothing new to report here. I framed a piece of Amy Butler fabric in a white Ikea frame (something I already had) to the desk for a little more color. Please ignore wrinkly curtains, those will be remedied soon.

So, yeah, that ugly bookcase is still there. Something is getting ready to happen to make it less disgusting. I'm not sure what just yet, but it can't stay this way much longer. 

I purchased these white curtains at Ikea. I would post a link to them but I can't seem to find these on the website. They're plain white and it was $14.99 for both. 

I spray painted my existing curtain rods Silver Nickel Satin, then popped off the old finials and replaced those with modern clear glass finials I also found at Ikea ($5.99).

Something has to happen with this thing. Do I upgrade the fan, like I did in the kitchen? It's nice to have a fan in my room in the summer. Or do I get a really pretty light fixture and just sweat in the summer?

So there you have it! I have a few more projects to do in order to wrap this thing up. I need something to hang over the bed, and have been working on some ideas for that. I also need to upgrade the curtains a bit (the plans are already in the works for that to happen this weekend). Finally, I need to deal with the issues of the ceiling fan and that bookcase. All in all, I think I probably spent about $200 or so, which isn't bad at all for changing up an entire room!