I'm yet again faced with the task of documenting an "after" without good "before" pictures. It turns out that after we got the basics of our bedroom put together in 2010, I never took another picture again. So this post from nearly 15 years ago (!) doesn't quite reflect how our primary bedroom looked in 2024, but it's pretty close:
By last year, we had an end-table screwed into the wall (same post as above) and some different throw pillows, but the room looked mostly the same--static for more than a decode. Then last year when we had to move speedily through all the
cascading changes, we transformed it in one weekend.
Here is how the room looks now:
You'll notice that we kept the IKEA Mandal bed (which would not have gotten out of the room in one piece anyway) and Brimnes headboard, since that headboard worked great with our oversized baseboard heaters. The walls are Sherwin Williams
Hyacinth Tint, though we kept the ceilings and the closet doors the color we had painted them
originally, an off-white Fleur de Sel matte.
We actually started off with our original white IKEA flokati rug, but the cats had other plans and after someone mistook it for the litter box, we went with this all-artificial plush turquoise number from Wayfair. It's machine washable. It also matches the beanbag chair in the corner--both are a soft greenish blue.
My vanity corner, here, has also transformed. You can't see it well here but the vanity without the mirror is what I'm currently using as a
sewing table. And the masks have moved.
It's now a combination makeup and homework space, yet more IKEA furniture: desk (
Micke) and chair. And of course the obligatory bulletin board:
Then from this angle, you can see we rearranged things a bit. Where our dresser was, we now have a bookshelf, our IKEA Hemnes from the office, painted in the same Hyacinth Tin in an attempt to blend it into the wall. The dresser, also IKEA, was originally in the kids' (green) room but actually is part of the Mandal series that always went with this bed, so now they are actually in the same room. The lamp was also in our previous bedroom - you can see it in the corner in both of these shots:
We painted the kick board doors the blue that is in our
upstairs bathroom, Russian Blue, just for fun. Blue and purple are the primary decor colors, if it wasn't obvious (and this time we went with true black-out curtains, after over a decade of having curtains that let too much light in during the summer months).
In the end, it looks both very similar and eerily different--like an alternative reality. Since both kids got a decor and furniture budget, they were very conscious of trying to reuse things we already had. The bed, headboard, dresser, lamp, and bookshelf were all reused. The beanbag, end table/stuffed toy bucket, and linens (rug, duvet cover, curtains) were new. It's amazing how a change in color scheme can remake a space.
