The MKDaly Show: The Big, Bad Bedroom Reveal: Part One

I have a confession to make. I have been keeping something from you.
(Cue the black-and-white screen of a lady from an old-time movie shrieking in horror)

Okay, calm it down, don't lose your toupee. The thing is, I have been holding out on you with the hope of making this reveal as good as possible (I have a perfectionist streak in me, FYI). Ever since I have begun living on my own, I have been on the quest to fix up my room. I want it to be a place where I can go to relax and not have the thought "Oh, gosh, I need to figure out how to make that nicer" about every feature my eye might rest upon in the room.

Being cheap, I was on the hunt for ideas for pretty much the better part of last year. I didn't want to put any money (or time, for that matter) into a project that I wasn't convinced would meet the nebulous expectation I set for myself.

Over the summer I made some *big* improvements to the room. While there are a few more things I would like to work on before saying "done," I have accepted that this will be an on-going project for some time and thus the Big Reveal will happen incrementally. I guess that isn't all that bad of a fate. I mean, at least I am getting some stuff done! And so, here are some of the things I have been working while keeping you unawares!

To start, I have made drastic changes to my bed situation. Here is the before:

Re: All the books--I take after my father and tend to be reading five books at any one time.

All of the colors worked together for the most part, but the patterns were of the clashing variety and thus gave off a chaotic feel. I also thought the room had a slight "immature" or not-put-together feel to it as well. Therefore, I hoped to find a way to bring a cohesive, grown-up appeal into the room with my end product.

I cannot afford to buy a nice bed frame, which might have introduced some stately substance to the bed/bedroom. In other words, I needed to bring out my innovative, creative guns. After going through too many magazines and websites looking for some inspiration, I finally found some in this picture.

As soon as I saw this picture, I was reminded of my childhood dream of having a canopy bed and decided right then and there that I was going to build myself a canopy for my bed. Going for fulfilling a childhood dream might not exactly sound like it would accomplish my goal of "growing up" my bedroom but paradoxes happen in life, so I went for it and this is what I ended up with:

Not bad, eh? After applying some new paint colors to the walls (three of the four walls are Valspar's "Fennel Sprout", the fourth wall is Valspar's "Asparagus"), I centered the bed on the fourth wall opposite the door. To attach and hang the canopy on the wall, I purchase two regular ol' school rulers which I proceeded to both glue and staple together like so--

I had a pair of white curtains left over which I decided to use as the canopy curtains. I stapled these to the bonded rulers as well. The curtains are quite voluminous so I actually crafted together two sets of the rulers, stapling one curtain to each set of rulers. Because I wanted to have an overlapping look to the curtains, I overlapped the two ruler sets when hanging these on the wall.

When I first told my mom about my plan to build a canopy, she very generously dug out this shelf that she bought a few years back at TJMaxx (a family favorite) and offered it to me. I jumped at the chance to use it.

And it now holds an honored spot as the crowning glory of my bedroom canopy, as you saw above.

The pillows and blankets have remained the same on the bed, and I would expect this will be the case for a while. Indeed, the colors from bedding have been quite the source of inspiration for me. The green shades that appear on the walls now are similar to the greens that are found in the pillow and bedspread. Also, the gold pillow ties very nicely with the gold trim of the canopy's top. Lastly, it just so happens that my library/art gallery of a bookcase echoes many of the same colors of the bedspread. Oh what a happy thought.

You know what else is happy? While I was fiddling with my camera when snapping the photos for this post, I discovered how to use some of manual capabilities of my camera. This means that my photos turned out a little bit better than in past posts. I did a happy dance accompanied with a couple of "Whoop, there it is!"s when I made this advancement. Ah, the simple pleasures of life.

Up next in the Great Bedroom Makeover I will show you the changes I made to my desk and window area. Until then, here is a quick review of today's Before and After.