At Home: master bedroom update

One of the biggest hurdles I face when it comes to my work is a constant, sometimes crippling, quest for perfectionism. "I'll post pictures of my bedroom when it's finished and perfect." "Before I upload this new item, maybe I should change the name of my Etsy shop to something better." And the list goes on. I can't tell you how many times I've wasted months of my creative energy stuck in "perfect."

The other day it occurred to me, one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love, never waits to post updates of their home. In fact, that's what makes their blog so great. They take us along for the journey. And isn't the journey the whole point? So I'm going to start embracing the journey and try not to get caught up in making everything perfect before I share it with you.

To begin with, I'm going to share some photos of our bedroom. If you recall, it used to look like this:

Ouch! Some serious adjustments need to be made here! I had already painted the bedroom the purply grey (Behr Manhattan Mist) a while back. Well, mostly painted...check out the area above each window - stellar! It's actually hard to see from the photos, but trust me, it was left unpainted for about four and a half years and it looked terrible. I didn't want to spend more money on paint, so I decided to keep the bedroom the same color and just give it a second coat (or a first coat if we're talking about the area above the windows). It's amazing how a fresh, clean coat of paint can make a world of difference. I then repainted the window trim and baseboards with a fresh coat of white. Things were finally starting to look good around here!

Once I finished the painting, I needed to re-address the duvet cover dilemma. For months, I had been looking online and at Joann's for fabric to make a cover myself, but I just couldn't find anything I liked. And the fabric I did like wasn't even close to within my budget. I also started to realize I was making things harder then they needed to be, as usual. When was I really going to make the time to sew this duvet cover? I mean my sewing table is practically buried by fabric and clothing that needs repair. So I finally relented and bought a lovely cover from Ikea for about $50 (including two pillow shams).

With the duvet cover dilemma resolved, I turned my sights to curtains. Yes Mom, I said curtains. Yes, those things you've been trying to get me to hang throughout my house since the day we moved in. Needless-to-say, I'm not a huge fan of curtains, but I decided our bedroom could use some softening (something curtains would do nicely). The previous home owners had kindly left all the curtain rods with the house, because they assumed I was a normal person and hung curtains. Instead, I took most of them down and stored them in the attic. But I left the rods in the master bedroom because I liked them and had plans to use them one day.

However, there was one thing about those curtain rods I didn't like: their placement. From the year I spent working in the Decor department at Home Depot, I knew they needed to be hung several inches beyond the window trim, but these were hung directly on the trim and they looked terrible. It's been annoying me since day one. So I started measuring and drilling. I should mention that at this point in the story I've already told you I painted the trim around the windows, and I want to assure you I'm not a total idiot. I didn't paint AROUND the curtain rods. I took the rods down, spackled and painted. So in actuality, the rods are not hanging on the trim at this point in the story, but I wasn't talking about curtain rods and curtains three paragraphs back, so it didn't make sense to bring it up then. :)

Once I finished hanging the curtain rod brackets, I grabbed one of the old curtain rods and placed it over the window. At which point I realized it wasn't long enough to bridge the gap between both brackets! Crap! And I was doing so well, too! I should qualify the statement above. Technically, they ARE long enough, but as you'll see in the photo below, they dip down in the center because they're about a half an inch shy of completely separating. Trying to hang curtains on them would most certainly result in catastrophic failure. Not to be deterred, I decided to use the old finials (decorative ends of the curtain rod) but to replace the rod itself with a longer wooden dowel.

Now you may be asking yourself, "Why doesn't she just move the brackets?" Well, I thought about that, but the thing is, even if the rods had fit width-wise, they still needed to be replaced with a solid rod (or dowel) because the rod itself was made out of two metal tubes, one smaller than the other. The connection where one half of the rod slips into the other larger half of the rod will show, and we can't have that! So I went to Lowe's (the horror! Remember I said I used to work at Home Depot?) and bought a couple dowels. When I got home I realized they were also too short. I have now done what I should have done from day one - MEASURED! Pesky math! Unfortunately, I haven't taken the time to buy longer dowels yet. For now, the old ones are just hanging there (by a thread) until I can replace them with my dowel version, so this is where we stand. I promise to update you all when I make more progress, but for now this is what the bedroom looks like:

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Product Details:
• duvet cover: Ikea
• framed print over bed: Henri Matisse. You can find it here.