Master Bedroom: The Reveal

Now that we have our eyes and minds on our new house, it’s good that our current rental looks like the home we wanted it to be.  I am calling it finito.  We are done tweaking this place and patiently (well, usually not so patiently) awaiting our closing date in mid-March.  Even with the closing of our new house though, we’ll still be living in our rental until we can get a few big things done before move-in day (which will probably be May-ish).  While we wait, I’m happy to report that we’ll be sleeping in a master bedroom that no longer looks like a cardboard box with the kind of swag (ahem…curtains) that’s not so appealing…


but rather one that is full on SWAG:


Before I dive into the details, I just want to say that this room is an excellent example of decorating with things you find on sale/secondhand.  As much as I’d love to run into a store, buy a bunch of gorgeous things that all swim together in the same interior design sea all at once, and come home to put a room together in a day or two, that’s just not in the cards for our budget over here.  It takes time (and patience!) to hunt things down that all fit together and make a room feel polished.  But the end result, both the room and the contents of your wallet, are worth the challenge the hunt can be.  Remember that the next time you’re staring longingly down Pinterest’s endless boards of rooms decorated to perfection with the latest and greatest trends.  I know I need to.  ;) 

The very first thing we did to break out of the box was paint the walls white and add a bold green accent wall, which made all the difference in the world in this room.  Or maybe it was taking down those curtains that made all the difference in the world.  Or both.  Yep, probably both.

We Have Some News…

We have some news…

It’s kind of big…

Not too big but big enough…

Master Bathroom Makeover Under $100

Hello!  Who’s in for a master bathroom reveal?  :D
This one won’t win any awards for most jaw-dropping transformation but nonetheless, it’s a transformation for the better and that’s all that really matters, right?  ;)
Before, our master bathroom was laden with that tan paint that coursed throughout the house (while not bad persay, not the best color for this house and it’s characteristics), some frilly curtains, baby blue fixtures, and horrible lighting.

While we weren’t going to dish out the money to change the tile, painting the room white (Pure White by Sherwin-Williams) was an easy way to make the blue feel a little more intentional.  The curtains came down as soon as I could get them off and, since the window itself is frosted, there really isn’t a need for window treatments but I made some anyway.  The full tutorial on that roman shade is here. 
After all of that refreshing plus some decor on the walls and new gold hardware (leftover from the kitchen makeover) on the cabinet, we are here:

Entry Way - Before & After

I know I said I’d be back with a master bathroom reveal but I’m hop, skip, and jumping over to the entry way today instead…because I’ve been procrastinating taking those after shots of the master bath I so desperately need to ring up a true reveal.  In my defense, we’re fairly certain one of the twins has the flu so I’ve been hunkered down with her.  We’ll get there, right?  You know it.  :D

Anywho, the entry way.  Entry ways are one of my favorite rooms in any house.  Just like I wrote about a back entrance awhile back, they can make or break first impressions of a house being the spot that's seen first.  They can also make or break your mood when you walk in from wherever it is you’ve been.

Here’s what ours looked like before we moved in:

I didn’t take this picture in the brightest part of the day in this room so it was feeling a little dark already and obviously, a pile of boxes doesn’t do much for aesthetics.  It was a real Debbie Downer for sure.

But, BUT, look at it now:

Custom Roman Shade - DIY

While I was in the middle of our master bathroom’s mini-makeover about a month ago, I got this (what I thought was a) great idea about how I could easily make a custom roman shade to liven up the window in there without any sewing.  Fast forward to one morning last week, when I got around to tackling that idea.  All was going swimmingly and I took a ton of pictures to show you and then I hung it up the finished shade and, well, if there was a soundtrack to go with my life, the sound bite at that moment would go something like *womp womp*.  Let me tell ya, it’s one thing when your plan fails halfway through the process and you can just ditch it for Plan B or just ditch it all together.  But when you complete the whole process AND THEN at the very end, when you’re expecting a firework of good emotions, things don’t pan out, it’s heart-breaking (in the most superficial way possible, of course).

Le sigh.

But, there is a good ending at the end of this even though my sorry roman shade had to be jimmy-rigged.  I’ll explain later.

Here’s that finished roman shade:

It looks real good in pictures but as we all know, pictures can lie in a social media world.  #amiright  #oramiright

The window in our master bathroom is frosted and our backyard is large and very private so there’s really no need for curtains or shades or anything like that except for aesthetic reasons.  And I like aesthetics so I decided on a shade.  After hunting around on some secondhand sites and online for a small, bamboo shade and coming up empty, I found this little guy* on Amazon Warehouse.  I was trying to find something under $10 and he rang in $3 over so not too bad but the magnetic feature was super cool, I thought, especially since this shade wouldn’t need to function.  The magnetic feature assured there wouldn’t be any strings to hide so I was sold.  Plus, I had further plans for it.  Read on.

One way I like to add color and pattern to a space is in the window treatments.  When you get tired of the current pattern you can swap them out pretty easily and somewhat affordably (especially if you’re talking sewing your own or using no-sew hem tape to make some).  I wanted to add some fun to our bathroom and the magnetic shade wasn’t going to do that on it’s own.  Nope.  It needed a little help. 
After a little bit of a search, I found this fabric and knew it would be the perfect match to our new shade.

A little bit of hot glue later and BAM, pattern right where we needed it.


Let me go into the process of how I went from plain to patterned because the process is gold, and then I’ll dive into where it all went wrong and how you can take the successful route instead.