A Masterly Master....

Before I get into the before and after photos of our freshly painted master bedroom (YAY!) here's a photo of the curtains I made for the office.  They're what I like to call "cheater" roman blinds- the fabric is cut long enough to cover the entire window if we ever need to darken the room for any reason but the pleats are safety pinned in place.  Eventually I plan to attach buttons to the shade in order to be able to put it up and down more easily but I didn't have enough matching buttons on hand and so safety pins will do for now!  I have to get some better shots but the colors of the curtains really tie in nicely with the area rug and the artwork we have in here. 

This is a piece of artwork I bought while traveling in South Africa.  It's been hanging at the top of our stairs for a year or so now and I was thrilled to find a spot for it in the office where I can really enjoy it:

And now, on to our master bedroom!  As I mentioned before, our master bedroom was the final room in the house to paint.  It was dingy, gross and ugly.  We purchased beautiful new bedroom furniture last year and I've been adding other bits and pieces since then but the walls really needed help.

Here's how the room looked when the previous owners lived here (this shot is taken standing in the doorway, looking to the left):

And this shot is standing next to the bed looking at the closets (you can see the open door to the right):

Ugly, huh?  Behind those closets is actually a dormer window that was never finished- there's a small door in the back of the closet that leads to a storage space where the window is.  Eventually we might reconfigure the closets to bring the window into the room but it's a big project that we're still debating. 

Here's our room now- this first shot is also taken from the doorway looking to the left of the room- we have our bed on the opposite wall that the previous owners did (and there was also another window right where our headboard is now- the previous owners closed it in when they added the mudroom- along with closing in a window in our bathroom- perhaps they were vampires who wanted to keep as much daylight out of the house as possible?  Strange.)

So we're now left with 2 small windows in a pretty large room, (oh, and no overhead lights in here!) so it's a little tough to photograph.  Here's the other side of the room:

When we bought our bedroom set we chose to only buy one matching nightstand.  I knew I wanted something more feminine on my side of the bed and eventually found a great round table.  I did the same with the lamps on our nightstands- Paul's is a little more modern and mine is a little more girly but I think they balance each other well.

Here's my lamp.  You can sort of see in the photo that there are actually little tiny rhinestones on the lampshade. 



And here's Paul's lamp.  I picked up the base at the Brimfield Antique Show and snagged the shade at Homegoods.

A shot of the room standing in front of our closets. 

More bedroom plans?  We'll hang the t.v. on the wall, find a new lamp for the dresser, and install new window shades- probably those cellular type shades in an ivory color.  I'm still looking for the perfect artwork for over the bed but for now the "his" and "hers" art that I made years ago will work!  We're going to change out all the bedroom doors to solid wood, probably stained to match the floors we've redone.  We're also going to change out our sliding closet doors to solid wood bifolds, painted to match the trim.  And Paul has plans to eventually redo the floors in our bedroom as well. 

So what do you think?  A slight improvement I'd say!