Creating a Retreat

I'd like to think that my husband and I are not the only ones who neglect their bedroom. I mean it's a room that you sleep in, because, honestly, who really has more time than that to spend in their room? It's not like I'm a child who can get grounded to their room, but wouldn't that be amazing? Obviously, my children don't always think going to their room is amazing.

So we first decorated our room, several years ago, I never got it done, and made some (a lot?) of mistakes when I decorated it. After a few years, I didn't love what I'd done to our room, and wanted to change it up again. If you're curious as to the original update post, you can find it {HERE}.

The main problem is that our room is cavernous (it's something ridiculous like 17' x 22') and becomes a dumping ground for everything from things that need to be donated, to just stuff that I don't know where else to put. This does not make for a very inviting or relaxing area.

It's gotten to the point that our lives are hectic. With me going back to work, and my husband having to pick up a lot of the evening activities that the kids have, our room was causing us as much stress as our schedules. A change needed to happen. We needed a retreat.

Luckily I started planning this change like a year ago. I knew what colors I wanted, but nothing was hammered down, until I got the brilliant idea to paint our bedroom a lovely dark blue. I had no idea when I'd convince my husband to paint our room again, but I knew that the walls would be Royal Navy, and that I wanted to pair it with Luscious Green, both are from Valspar. This color combo is pretty bold and preppy, but the bright white tones it down, and I really like the bright against the dark. With the colors picked out and a more firm plan forming, I decided that my vanity would be painted Luscious Green to balance out the lamps I painted in the same color.

As luck would have it, my husband asked what I wanted for Christmas, and I said I'd love to get some of our house projects done. He said that it wouldn't be done before Christmas, but New Year's Day we could start on the room, and he wouldn't complain! What a terrific gift!

Murphy and his law struck on New Year's Day, and  I ended up being sick as a dog, but my husband, rock star that he is, cleaned and organized our closet so that we could move stuff from our room in there during the painting. I'd spent the week before cleaning up and throwing things away from our room.

Monday, we both had off, was the day we tackled our behemoth, and we finished just before dinner Monday night. I even got another side project done, while the paint was drying! Score!

So here's what our room looked like when I finished the last update. The difference between the two rooms is pretty astounding.

There's nothing wrong with the room, other than it was a little boring, and it didn't stay clean. I began to regret the color choice on the walls after a bit. We used the same color downstairs, in our basement, and I love it there, because it gets very little sun and it's a nice brightish color. It's not so great in our bedroom, which receives the full force of the morning sun, thanks to our NW facing home. The dark blue makes our room feel cozy and intimate, while still being bold and strong.

You'll also notice that the bed is a little different. It's the same bed that my grandfather built, but we removed two of the posts, and upholstered the headboard. The lamps are also new. They had been black, but with a quick coat of paint they're the perfect accent to the nightstands.

The headboard had some veneer damage, and I didn't feel confident in fixing the damage so I opted to cover it instead. I had purchased some faux suede and gimp braid a while ago, so then it was just a matter of getting it onto the dang headboard.

Unfortunately, for me, the headboard weighs about as much as a rhino, and I needed help with it. Moving it around and such. I also ended up breaking the moulding around one of the feet of the headboard with the side of my foot. I maybe should've gone to urgent care for stitches, but I was on a mission. I really wanted to sleep in my bed that night. We'd put in a lot of work already, and I wanted to be done, which is probably why I ended up injuring myself in the first place. Oh well. C'est la vie.

So the first step was to lay out the batting and the suede on top of the headboard. I used a twin sized quilt batting, and just folded in in half to cover the headboard. then after I got that mostly smoothed out, I laid the suede on top of it.

It's not much too look at right now, but it's going to be great. I promise. My Big Guy was pretty confused at how it was going to turn into something. I told him to just watch me work and let my vision come to life. He was still skeptical. Oh the joys of having a budding teenager.

So the next step is not hard, but a bit time consuming. Out came the staple gun and a lot of staples. I didn't get any pictures of the stapling process, but I started at the top middle of the headboard, and butted my staple gun right up against the trim and stapled along the curve. Then I moved to the bottom of the headboard, where we wrapped the suede and batting around to the back, and I stapled it to the underside of the headboard. I then moved onto the curves along the edge of the headboard, and stapled along it's edge. The last was the most stressful part of the whole project. Getting those curves right was a little maddening. After the stapling was done, I just trimmed the suede and batting as close as I could to the staples. It's starting to come together!

After letting the glue gun heat up, which seemed to take forever, I was finally able to put on the finishing touch to the headboard. Gluing on the gimp was the easiest part of the whole project, and really finishes off the look! I took my time and really focused on keeping the gimp along the edges and against the trim. Gluing right over the staples. The finished look is so amazing! I almost couldn't believe that I'd accomplished this.

After all of that was done, it was time to put the bed back together. It looks completely different than it had, and we couldn't be more pleased with it.

So that was our bedroom at the very beginning of January, and since then I've been making changes here and there, and I'm very excited to share them! I just need to get those posts written! I don't know that our room will ever be "done", but that's ok. The journey in decorating it is going to be fun, and I'm excited for it to grow and evolve. What has been nice is the effort the both of us has put in to keep our room clean and relaxing. It's been lovely.

Thanks so much for reading!