Master Bed and Bath
$4 Florals
Did you guys know that I love thrift stores? No? Really. So much so that I’ve seriously considered changing the name of this blog to Triangle Thrift – more than once this week. That’s right.
Anyhoo. Here is my latest little find, a $4 botanical sketch – in a cool 80′s cheesy gold frame. Very Home Interiors. Remember those old catalogs? This look alike came from a Goodwill in Raleigh.
The frame isn’t in perfect condition, in fact it’s a bit beat up which I think enhances the character of the print.
It now lives in our master bathroom. On my side. I was guesstimating in the store, but it turned out to be the perfect size.
The big red flower ties in with my big red jewelry holder nicely. If you’re new around here check out the past post here.
There is a lot going on in this corner right now. I’m having a major case of design ADD where the casa is concerned, especially in our master suite.
At least I use thrifty items to feed my disorder. You can check out all of our other thrifty finds on this page right here.
A Little Rug on Rug Action
So for about 52 hours, Chad let me believe that I might have won the debate on the “living room in the bedroom” concept last seen here.
The compromise (darn marriage) is that the chairs can stay but the table must go so that mirror feet viewing to occur. Boo.
So now where does that leave us?
Lots of places actually. A lot of weirdness is going on in our bedroom sitting area now. All of which stemmed from finding a $15 mexican rug from the Nearly New Shoppe in Durham.
I thought that its bright colors would match our curtains in a cool, ripped-out-of-Domino kind of way – when in fact the patterns just clash too much. And the rug is W-A-Y bright.
In order to beef up the thinness of the almost blanket like rug, I decided to throw down the guest bedroom rug underneath. You know just to see. They talk about rug layering on Apartment Therapy so how bad could it be?
Well it was not so bueno. Especially after I pulled down our floral curtains to see if they were just making it worse. We did agree on a thrifted ottoman to replace the coffee table though. It will be recovered whenever we decide what the frick is going on with the rest of the room.
And now I really have NO idea what’s going on in there.
Deep sigh.
I think we’ll go back t the old curtains for a bit and rethink the blanket slash rug. But you never know until you try right?
Although I know someone who hopes it stays.
I think she thinks the blanket in the floor is like a big new bed just for her. We couldn’t pry her off the thing.
Day Off
It may not be a good thing. Me at home alone, nothing going on. Because this is what starts going on.
I made a little living room in our bedroom.
You all may have about six hours to decide if you’d like to buy my black wicker chairs (they are posted in the shop here), because if the hubs comes home and approves we might adopt them.
But oh lookie there – you get to see our painted dresser too!
We painted it Valspar’s Ocean Storm. After bringing it into the house and getting it all touched up and finished Chad says “It looks good. But if you did it again, would you use the same color?” I said. “That’s okay honey, I understand. You can try your question again.”
I love the color. It isn’t too bright to compete with our pale green walls and it blends in nicely with some of the shades of blue found in our curtain fabric. The only thing I find worth changing is my Kardashian lamp. Curvy Kim clashes with our new dresser.
It’s okay. She wasn’t ready for a commitment anyways.
I’m not really sure that the Texan will commit to this new bedroom set up either, even though I am in love.
The coffee table, which was a college dumpster dive, will block the view of his feet in his precious full length mirror. It was a Valentine’s gift our first year here.
The goal of putting this all together was to figure out what size and pattern of rug would work well in our bedroom, since we only want it on this half of the room anyways. I am not convinced that that black and white striped cushions are the best for this room, that’s why in the photo you see that one is on and the other is off.
A fun graphic rug will need to go underneath it all, which will probably really determine the final cushion pattern.
Whew. A lot of decisions for Friday morning impulse rearranging.
What do you guys think?
All Painted
So, the TROSA dresser was hauled out of the Subaru and unloaded into the carport – where it sat for a full weekend.
And that was a couple of weekends ago.
I’ve been a bad blogger – but a surprisingly good painter. The Texan was in his homeland for the weekend, so I got to rolling and took care of bidness.
The brass plates and hardware were surprisingly easy to pop off with a butter knife. They didn’t even bend, turns out the nails used to attach them were teeny.
The brass hardware was mostly what I loved so much about this piece so it was really important for me to keep it all intact. I even used a little brasso to shine them up all up.
We did the same thing with this dresser as we did with the dining room china cabinet – we left the inside wood unpainted. I was worred that the inside cabinet might see so much use that the paint might scratch. However, the finished product would look great a with fun coat of paint inside. You’ll see what I mean later.
Anyhoo. This all is just to explain that taping was required. Very slow and careful taping.
First up was a cleanly rolled coat of KILZ primer, tinted to match our top coat of Valspar’s Ocean Storm. The change was so awesome – right away!
The top coat looked even better.
And this my friends is where I will leave you hanging. I can tell you that it’s all loaded up and in the house, fully in use now – but it’s too dark right now to snap good pictures. They will be forthcoming I promise.
Any thoughts on the color? I was torn between bright white or glossy black and just met somewhere in the middle instead. Feeling pretty good about that.
Rugs Can Be Tricky
They anchor our rooms, they can provide a big punch of color, or just easily fade into the background. You’re talking to the queen of the sisal rug here, I love patterns, but a large patterned item on our floor might make me sweat a bit. Rugs aren’t cheap and they aren’t easy to lug home, ship or return if they don’t work out.
My ultimate advice would be to start a room with a rug that you love and work up. Of course this isn’t always practical. Especially in the case of our master bedroom – which has taken us almost 3 years just to decide what color to paint the walls, decide if we should keep our carpet or switch to hardwoods (an argument I lost by the way) and we’re still working on the rest of the decor.
This weekend we scored a great Chinoiserie style dresser from TROSA that we’re going to refurbish to replace our particle board Target tv cabinet turned dresser. In an attempt to decide what color to paint the new dresser I’m scoping out rugs too.
Since we are not switching out our bedroom flooring for wood or cork like were thinking about in the past – I’ve redirected my attention to rugs. A geometric and colorful rug could really anchor the furniture in the sitting area of our bedroom and I’ve decided that it is okay to have a rug on top of carpet. So there you go.
Rugs USA seems to have some great options on their website that are acutally affordable. Plus they offer free shipping.
My initial thought is to go with an easy geometric blue or grey pattern.
But there are also some nice patterns that are punchier, but not in your face punchier.
This isn’t something that we’re ordering right away, since we just put down some cash for the new-to-us dresser. But I do feel like it’s a big piece of the puzzle when considering what color to paint that new dresser.
Black, white or smoky gray? What do you guys think?
Words About Lamps
In addition to the natural jute rugs, ceramic animals, pillow-making and True Value – I have discovered a new obsession. You are not likely not surprised at all to discover that I have a certifiable addiction to lamps.
We’ve written about a dozen posts about lamps in the past year and a half of blogging and I only write about 1/10th of the lamps that I see and love. There are 12 lamps in our house currently, two of which received a recent makeover and one thrifty little booger that I do not recall even telling you about.
I’ll try to keep the details straight, since I know you’re all on the edges of your seats right now.
Way back when we talked about a failed attempt to build a living room sofa table. In the end we coped out with a tiny Tar-jay table and a brass Home Goods lamp atop it.
If you’re an avid blog reader slash psuedo home stalker you may remember that the little brass lamp from the picture was actually located in our guest bedroom prior to it’s living room debut.
So what did we put in it’s place? Well, another brass lamp of course!
Only this one is big and round and actually pretty 80′s tastic.
Agreed?
Although the gold-tone isn’t as nasty in the room as one might have predicted, I’m still contemplating a paint job. This was the original thought when we bought the $8 lamp from the Habitat ReStore. The only dilhemma now is what color since I’m pretty certain those pillows are about to get a switcheroo and maybe even our headboard fabric.
I have a sickness.
Oh and remember the last set of brass lamps that I painted and repainted?
They are no longer orange. Which was feeling halfway good.
Now they are red and fully bueno. Oh, and I hot glued black grosgrain ribbon to them too. Just like Nate would do, before he was cancelled.
Insert sad face here for Nate, but a happy face here for new red lamps.
