it's how you live: our bedroom makeover!

this winter we did a little makeover in our bedroom. it was the ONLY room in the house {besides the basement} that hasn't been touched since we moved in. this is the color it was when we bought the house. which is a nice color, i just didn't pick it.

i had moved my craft stuff up to our room at some point, thinking i'd paint/create more if it was there. i didn't. and it just drove me crazy because it was all cluttery. so, i moved that all back downstairs to the basement.

we toyed with the idea of buying new furniture for about 5 minutes. i'd LOVE a black metal bed and more unique looking dressers, but, we have perfectly good furniture. i can think of a lot of other ways i'd rather use money we might spend on a new bed...that would use our money more wisely. so, we didn't. and i'm so glad!

here's the before:

those jerseys went to the basement, too ;-) FINALLY!

i have a problem. a few of those are books i'm in the middle of reading. a few are ones that i refer to often that i have already read. but MOST of them are books i'm going to read!

so. the main thing we did was paint the room. and i wanted it to be gray. but gray is a HARD color! i wanted it a warm gray. but not purple. or blue. or brown. ha! we definitely tried 12 colors before i figured it out!! 12!! joshua became an expert at it for me. i'd get 3 more colors, and he would paint while i made dinner. i would look at the colors that night, and the next day in the sunlight, and not like any of them :/

we REALLY wanted our kids to be a part of this little project. they taped the walls. joshua did most of the painting of the samples.

there were some massive holes from previous owners (that were hidden behind a mirror) that we needed to fill and sand and pat had the little boys help with that. it, of course, takes longer when the kids help, but i want them to have the experience and to learn some small skills as we do things like this.

the girls helped me with the actual painting...trimming the edges, and rolling on the paint. we didn't get any new bedding, or lamps, or curtains, or art. we did get new bedside tables and a mirror {the full length mirror we had was a $5 one that Pat had in college in his dorm room!} at HomeGoods and hung some lights that i had from christmas.

here's the after:

it took us MONTHS to re-do this little project. pat and i can be very "tunnel-vision" when we have a goal. and we sacrifice our family and people that MATTER when we get like that. we really talked it through ahead of time, and wanted this to be an enjoyable project and have teachable moments for our whole family. so, we worked on it when we could. which wasn't often. our friend lost her husband near the beginning of it, and that took priority WAY above this silly project! the furniture was all in the middle of our room for WEEKS. and, once it was all back and painted, i didn't want to rush around finding bedside tables. i looked a couple times when i was near certain stores and didn't force it. it makes me love the room even more, because there was a JOY in doing it and there was some pain in living with it "un-done" for so long.