make our bedroom a refuge

So I didn’t get this done before hubby left for Iraq, but it is still on our to do list! I found some great ideas for what I want to do in there and I did get the room totally cleaned out so we made a little progress! I’m hoping hubby will help me get it painted when he gets home since he’ll have some time off before he goes back to work! Maybe by the end of 2009 I can get this off the list!

I am so not happy with our bedroom. The paint colour on the walls is not relaxing and it is so cluttered and chaotic that it is not a good place to relax.

So,
step 1 – clean it out – get rid of anything that does not belong in a bedroom!
step 2 – paint – something soothing and relaxing, I’m thinking in the blue realm
step 3 – decorate – I had bought some things for the walls but hubby never put them up – plus I’d like some pictures and mementos around

at the moment. Why are everyone’s castoffs in our room?

my goal is to rid our bedroom floor of all of the boxes and objects that got stuffed here when company was coming or because someone didn’t know where to put it…

and totally cleared all the clutter from the master bath. Scrubbed, mopped, and polished every surface. It is so much easier to keep an area clean when it starts out clean – I put everything away now as soon as I use it as I don’t want to mess up my pristine surfaces :)

Next stop: the window seat in the bedroom….

but I’m not done yet … :(

Why is it that everything ends up in our room when we are doing a quick cleanup?

The downstairs has been clutter free for a while. I’m going to try and keep the bedroom that way too.

A recent discovery? A quart of paint is cheap – and it can cover an entire wall in my house. w00t! Experiment city!!! Right now, I’ve painted one wall a royal blue and the other three and a half a sort of light nutmeg color. (the dog + an accessable paint can = paint on the floor rather than the wall)

It’s kind of dark, but we have very light colored furniture and our drapes are on the lighter side as well. Once we add in some art/decor stuff and crown molding (sp?), I think it’ll come together nicely. Most of our bedding is reds/browns/blues anyway, so I think it looks pretty good. It’s not quite the look I was hoping for, but still good!

Then again results are always good, or at least closer to our tastes than what we started with, once we finally finish.

After two rooms, I have to admit that I am HORRID when it comes to prep work. I can’t even describe the level of “homeowner hell” that painting prep sends me too. Pardon the expression!

The detail work? ACK! I swear, my dog will add a lovely series of tail prints or my beloved preschooler will “help” with the wrong color just as soon as I think, “Ok, this section is perfection in and of itself!”

Nevertheless, I really love the results at the end. It never fails that I second guess paint choices, or look at it and think “maybe this would be better…” but it’s still so much fun, and like I said, once we take the plunge, it’s easier to tweak it to get to the point where we really, really want to be. :o)

I’m debating “fixing up” the room while my sweetie is out on workups as a s’prise for when he gets back. On the other hand, I’m wondering if he really wants more of a hand in the decision making.

If we don’t get it done before cruise, I definitely will do it while he’s out to sea, if nothing else to prevent the blues from making me crazy!

I do know that I want an all around improvement – new baseboards and trim, scrape the scary popcorn/cottage cheese stuff off the ceiling and paint it, and I’d loooove to get the wood floors fixed up. The former owners had their aquarium in there and there’s some markings that will sand up, it just takes time.

Ultimately, I’d like our entire house to feel like a place we can escape to.

Someday!

We have NO clue… red? blue? yellow? beige? hot pink, perhaps???

We know that we want to feel like it’s a relief to head to our bedroom, but right now it feels like a place we walk into and keep our eyes closed so we don’t see the weirdness in there…

I have a few plans to get all the “unbedroomy” things out. As much as I love our kitty, her food and tree are going to be relocated. Where? Not sure yet. I know she loves to look out windows, so I’m thinking she might like a new home in our office or maybe the livingroom.

We also need some kind of nightstand for our alarm clocks, since we’re on slightly different schedules. Right now, the way things are set up, we only have one nightstand and between the alarm, the books, and a couple of glasses of water, it’s overburdened! Poor wee nightstand…

Laundry is another issue, but not a major one. We’re going to clean out the closet a bit and make room for the basket in there, so it’s not out where everyone can check out our dirty laundry walking past our door.

Themes. Gosh. We just have NO idea. I think that will come together with color and artwork and we can expand on it from there. We’re kind of hoping to see something and go “YES! That’s it!” Alas, it hasn’t happened yet.

The truly burning question: Why are we so afraid of color???

was “decorate my bedroom”. I need to work on making OUR (not MY) bedroom a place to escape to. A place that provides rest, comfort, relief – no reminders of all the things that we have to do. A place that isn’t a dumping ground for all the “stuff” that doesn’t belong anywhere else. We deserve more as a couple.