Modern Luxe Sitting Area April 13, 2010

Our bedroom is still on its journey towards becoming a luxe sensual modern bedroom.

Our bedroom is huge, think 15′ x 16′ of hugeness. Our closet is also huge (we could fit a twin bed in there and still have plenty of room) and our bathroom is another study in vast amounts of space.

We’re one of those families that don’t suffer from too much stuff and lack of space, but too much space and lack of stuff. This is only compounded by my constant purging of items we don’t need or use as well as my affection for small space living and thus treating our house as if we live in a tiny boat.

Ok, back to the bedroom. Our queen sized bed is at one end of the bedroom and there is a huge area at the other end. I decided to make that into a bit of a relaxing sitting area for the hubby and I to chat, which will be especially helpful once kids come around and we simply want to be able to hear ourselves think.

Let’s take a tour of the sitting area, shall we?

The leather chair, a steal at $25 from Garden Ridge’s Clearance center. It was missing a leg, I replaced it with a $3 birch leg (I can’t find those straight legs, anyone know where to find such legs?). You might also recognize the peacock pillow from the bed, which has migrated to soften up the masculine chair.

The grey asymmetrical chair, a craigslist find at $83 is huge. I can crawl up in this chair and still be comfortable. It get’s a neutral pillow to tie in the carpet color.

The chairs are sitting on 1.5 yards of fluffy fleece. Yes, as in the fabric. I simply tossed it on the carpet, placed the furniture on top and poof-instant rug. Not bad for less than $10.

An IKEA table sits in the middle holding a faux rosemary topiary and three pillar candles…not! Those pillar candles are actually empty cans with floating candles-clearence at Hobby Lobby-on top. I’ve been debating spray painting them silver-again-or covering them with wrapping paper like the vases. However, the whole fire issue comes to play.

Behind the chairs is the tea station, which hasn’t been used. Maybe it has something to do with the fact there are no tea cups there. The table started as a floating shelf and I added birch legs from IKEA. Originally, I covered the table in woven bamboo placemats when the room was a zen retreat, but easily removed the placemats for the current silver to shine through. I thought about painting the legs grey, but left them birch to further tie in the carpet color.

Above the tea station lies a lovely plain mirror. I have two ideas about the mirror. Idea #1: frame it out with molding. Idea #2:  add two more mirrors, one above and one underneath and then frame it out with molding. What do you think?

The bedroom still has plenty of room to grow. The wall with the new “wrapping art” still needs the addition of something else to take up the huge expanse of space on that wall. There is another blank wall opposite that wall and I still need to sew grey curtains to add to the neutral curtains for the windows.  I have a TON of grey fabric, about 25 yards left, that I can still use, so maybe I should just drape a wall in fabric 🙂

What three words would you use to describe your bedroom?

Wrap up the art April 5, 2010

The bedroom is coming along. It hasn’t been forgotten. The walls are painted a nice Dover Grey and projects are being born and nurtured to life. Once such project is some art for one of the walls.

Using scrap wood from the headboard project, spray adhesive and wrapping paper found in the clearance section, I decided to make some art.

What do you think? I might add some moulding as a frame.

Here it is on the wall flanked by two mirrors found on clearance for $2.50 that I painted silver.

Should I add a frame?

A place to lay my head March 25, 2010

Thanks to Target’s clearance section and a swift kick in the butt, the bed is finally finished!

The headboard is upholstered with $1 a yard fabric that I found in Puerto Rico (yes, I brought a total of 31 yards of various grey tone fabrics and even some purple satin). I added nailhead trim as the finish.

The comforter was also made by yours truly and will probably be the last comforter that I ever sew. It was a royal pain in the behind. It’s actually reversible, the darker grey is two shades darker than the headboard and the other side is a light grey that is the same color as the pleated pillowcases.

Which brings me to the pleated pillowcases. I love the look of them, and thankfully they look good in these photos, but they’re a tiny bit too tight. The pillows are bursting at the seams. Thankfully I have plenty of fabric, so I’ll probably whip up another pair.

Question for my sewers, any hints on keeping the pleat from popping up and staying flat once a pillow is stuffed inside.

For these cases I tried hemming tape to keep the pleats flat, however for the second set I’m open to doing something different.

The sheet set was a total steal. Queen size 400 count sheet set, originally $70. I got it for $17. Yep, I went back and picked up two more-one for a gift and an extra one for our bedroom. The throw pillows were also on clearance $12 for the quilted pair and $7 for the purple peacock that I couldn’t resist even though nothing in my house is purple, or peacock.

So, what do you think? Is the bed a hit or miss?

From Green Beans to a Simple Chic Vase March 10, 2010

We’re in the middle of redoing our bedroom. Nothing really major, simply changing it from a sage green and brown monochromatic zen oasis into a glamorous vintage modern grey monochromatic sensual oasis. In the middle of another project for the bedroom, I had extra pieces of wrapping paper sitting on the floor-begging to be used. Since I hate to waste materials, including 4″ x 11″ silver paper scraps, I listened to the paper crying to be put to use. Plato, the cat, helped me decide by knocking over some cans that I had sitting on the steps waiting to be taken to the craft room for storage until they could find another use as well.

I took three different cans-ignoring the groans from the other cans not chosen-and set them on my table. I sprayed them with adhesive and attached the wrapping paper. The light makes the metallic paper look bent, but it’s not bent.

I then took some faux flowers that were used in our wedding and clipped the stems down until they were nestled nicely inside the vases.

The last step was placing the vases in their new home on the bedroom’s tea station. What do you think?

What have you repurposed lately?