One Room Challenge: Master Bedroom

I’m so excited to be able to participate in this fall’s One Room Challenge! Have you heard of it? It’s a semi-annual event that is the brainchild of Linda from Calling It Home where she and 19 other bloggers pick one room to redo in a 6-week period and blog about their progress weekly. I’ve enjoyed following their progress in the past and was so happy when Linda announced that this time there would be a linky for others to join in the fun.

It’s just the kick in the pants I need to finally finish a little master bedroom refresh that I’ve been working half-heartedly on for about, oh, a year. Yeah, but now with this 6-week deadline, I’m inspired to finally put all the ideas I’ve had rolling around in my head into reality.

Today I’m going to show you how our master bedroom has evolved since we bought the house nine years ago (you can see all our remodeling posts here), as well as the plan for this redo. I’ll also update this post with links to all the ORC posts which so they will be easy to find:

• Thrifted Oil Paintings Gallery Wall and A Basket: ORC Week Two
• Plate Wall & Coral Additions {ORC 3)
• How To Hang a Plate Wall {ORC 4}
• Lamp Makeover, Pillows & Cabinet Styling {ORC 5}
• Coral & Green Master Bedroom Reveal

Why not start at the very beginning? This was the master bedroom when we viewed the house – even though it was 2004, the room was firmly stuck in the 1980’s. See that smile while I’m stripping wallpaper? That was about the only time I smiled, I think, during the entire week it took to strip this room as well as our daughter’s room.

But after stripping, painting the dark wood ceiling, adding a french door and a faux board-and-batten treatment, I was pretty happy with the result:

We still had the awful carpet, but I loved that it was restful and peaceful. And green is my favorite color, so I’ve remained happy with that color choice, though I did paint it with a slightly darker green a few years later. But I’ve become a bit bored with it over the last few years and as I’ve had whims ideas I’ve moved things in and around the room which has only helped to make the room look unfinished.

This is where we are today: nice, but lacking any fun or exciting elements. At least the bad carpet is gone – replaced with our brown paper flooring treatment a few years ago. Now to just get a few more things on the wall, and um, off the floor. And I haven’t been happy with the thrift store lamps I painted last year with silver – they look more stainless than mercury (unlike the cool mercury glass pumpkin redo that turned out perfect). What’s nice about diy is that it’s usually easy to do it again.

I made the roman shades when we moved in with a green ticking stripe fabric, but nine years later they are dirty and worn and I’m ready for something different. It’s time to add a bit of color, too, and I’ve been loving coral lately, and love how it looks with green, so I’m looking to add pops of coral along with the white/cream & green color scheme.

So, here’s the plan {which could change throughout the next six weeks – you never know!).

• Add a fun plate wall over the bed in shades of white, green, and coral – I think the round plates will help balance out the boxy mirrors.
• Repaint lamp bases and add interesting texture or stencil the shades (I attempted to add coral with ribbon on the shades, but it just looks pink, sadly)
• Make a decorative pillow with a graphic coral fabric.
• Create an art wall with the original art we’ve collected through the years at thrift stores (remember when Brian made this funny video about his thrifted ‘bad art’ collection?)
• Make or buy a new duvet.
• Find a basket to fit under the antique sewing machine I’m using as my nightstand.

• Add a colorful pillow to the chair.
• Edit the dresser to be less cluttery.
• Purchase bamboo blinds? Or attempt to clean roman shades?
• Paint or just remove lamp in corner {I don’t really use it}.
• Rehang the mirror on our door.
• Replace the dusty, years-old dried flowers from the backyard with something – anything – else.

Well, think I can do it? In six weeks? Stay tuned to find out!

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