Sleepin' Pretty, Part II

It feels great to say that we're done (for the time being) with our master bedroom and we are smitten!  We have switched out every single ugly beige light switch and electrical outlet for white switches and outlets, painted every square inch of the room (except the carpet), and arranged the furniture in a way that works for us.  In the beginning, the bed was on the big, blank wall on the far side of the bed and Matt's dresser and television were directly across from it (where the console table now resides).  Those were the only furniture items in the room until my papasan chair moved in.  See this post for the before pictures as well as pictures from the other half of the room.

Here is the view from the doorway.  The walls are a soft grey-taupe-brownish color, which is a nice contrast to our green accent wall.  This picture was taken before we swapped some of the accessories.

This is the view from the bathroom.  I think this corner could use more color, especially in the form of a new chair.  I am smitten by a tall, dark, and curvy chair at Home Goods (it's even on clearance!) and I'm currently trying to convince hubby that it would make an excellent birthday gift (if it's still there).  The curtains are burlap and I made six of them from 15 yards of fabric, which was on sale (regularly $3.99/yd, $1.60/yd with my 60% off coupon) at JoAnns.  The total cost for the curtains (not including hanging hardware) was $25!

This picture has the most accurate paint color portrayal (except the pinkish spot in the middle).  The blank wall in this picture will eventually become a wall of floating bookshelves.  My inspiration for this wall is a combination of my grandparents' house (no pictures available), Young House Love's zippered patio seam, and my pinspiration. 

I would like to find some livelier accent decorations and sew a small accent pillow for our bed or for the chair in the corner from a napkin I found on clearance at Cost Plus World Market for under $2.  Eventually, we plan to swap out the floor for something dark and sleek, swap the baseboards for something more decorative, and build cabinets and a really tall armoire in the random nooks in our bedroom.  We'll eventually get around to those projects!  Next up on our list: the master bathroom, the master closet, and the office.

What home improvement projects are you dreaming about right now?  Are you planning to tackle them soon or do expect that you'll have to wait a while?  Leave a comment and let us know!

Cleanin' House

Let me tell you a little secret.  We're almost into our third month of marriage and we're still settling into our house.  As in, I'm still moving in.  My old bedroom still has quite a bit of stuff that I have yet to pack up and move over.  Plus, we still haven't put away all of our wedding gifts.  I think a few of my bridal shower gifts are still searching for a permanent home, too.  We have a lot of stuff that doesn't have a home yet and most of it is sitting on our dining room table.  This weekend, however, we decided to take care of an area that was haunting Matt: the garage.  His man-cave-to-be was filled with unfinished furniture, lumber, stuff to give away, tools, and holiday decorations.  It wasn't giving off the vibe he wanted, so he literally pulled EVERYTHING out of the garage.  I wish I had a before picture (like usual, I didn't get to snap a pic of the space before starting), but there was stuff everywhere.  In about a five hour span, he pulled everything out of the garage (except for the stuff in our awesome cabinets) and we worked together to put stuff back into the garage in an orderly fashion.  We still have stuff to recycle (our bin is full), stuff to donate, and stuff to sell, but each of those piles are separated into boxes and don't intrude on the rest of the garage.

Here are the soon-to-be poker table and the bar.  Oh, and I used a prop from our wedding to hide the water heater.  Can you see it hiding in the back?

Contrary to how this picture may look, all of the wood is well organized in this photo!  We have a lot of projects going on right now, including one hiding beneath the blue sheet.

Holiday storage (and extra carpet?!)

There's still some work to be done on these shelves, but we'll get around to it eventually!

Matt also intends to further organize the open storage area (above) as well as our paint/fertilizer/anything-that-would-be-harmful-to-dogs-or-kids storage area.  We keep that stuff (aside from sharp objects like saws and tools) in a single cabinet that we will be able to lock up before we get a dog and/or have kids.  Hubby is thrilled to have the garage finished!  Now he can move his movie and Simpsons posters to the garage man cave.

Then, our office and guest bedroom/craft room walls will be blank and ready for some decoratin'!  We finally agreed about what we will do with our two secondary bedrooms!  The current craft room/guest bedroom will become the designated guest bedroom (complete with my old bed) and the current office will get a complete facelift (because scrapbooking supplies are oh-so-pretty).  We've already started by moving the sofa bed into the garage (we don't intend for it to be used as a bed out there), thanks to the help of my parents.  It took all four of us to move the sofa downstairs and out of the house on Sunday.  The next step is to figure out how we want to arrange the office, which now has my desks in it as well as Matt's desk.  Here's to hoping that we figure out a good configuration for our desks!

Are you currently in the midst of re-purposing rooms? Have you given your husband the go-ahead on a man cave?  What's your best tip for merging households?  Leave a comment and let me know what's up in your house!