Time Tunnel

Oh. Heeey...Three months goes by way faster (like, WAY FASTER) than I can believe. Was it really April that I last checked in with you? Geesh. That's embarrassing...

Excuse: The rent contract was up for renewal in May. Since I had a few loose ends in my life, I debated long and hard about the possibility of moving. Ultimately I decided to stay put. During the deciding period, I put all projects on "hold" for the entire month of May while I sorted through my options. What's the point of home improvement if [1] you are going to move really soon and [2] you don't have to spruce up the place for selling? 


After re-signing the lease and settling in (if you can say that, it's not like I ever unsettled) for another year, I got busy with my back log of projects--only I never got around to sharing any of it with. Whoops! Now here we are in July. If I had a tail it might be between my legs at this moment. But, alas, tails were snuffed out of my species quite some time ago.

Enough of my pseudo-self-chastisement/CYAing. Let's get down to biznizz. And, yeah, I have been biznizzy (i.e. "busy" for all the non-gansta folk readers). Though I left you out of the loop, you can now expect a steady stream of "what I've been up to" posts as I catch you up to speed.

First up, the bedroom.

As you recall, I have been trying to fix up the other half of the room because it was, well, embarrassing the nice half.

I cringe looking at this picture. Something is afoul in Denmark and it is this corner of my bedroom. (For those of you who didn't get the reference, pick up the nearest copy of Bill Shakespeare's Hamlet).

The highest priority for this corner was rearranging the gallery wall(s). Over the course of the months of March, April, May, June and July (I am not exaggerating), I tried numerous times to remedy the sorry situation. Here is a photo-review of my earnest stabs in the dark. Seriously, I felt like I was in darkness...

This was my first attempt. I mapped it out on paper beforehand and was pretty excited to see how it looked up on the wall. Let's just say it was a major letdown. I had a bad taste in my mouth about the arrangement by the end of the week. Being the eternal design optimist that I am, I decided I would leave it be for a little bit and see if it grew on me.

Nope. Not a chance. In fact I got more dissatisfied with it each day I had to wake up with it staring back at me. Something had to change. I chronicled my many attempts for happiness-a-la-wall.

Psssh. No.

Nice try. Not.

Failed at failing.

Voted off the island.

I was getting pretty down about the prospect of having a half-pretty-half-embarrassing bedroom. Something had to change. I slowly had built up my stash of wall hangings, but things just weren't falling together like I had hoped.

For a while I had entertained the idea of painting the frames of the pictures white and possibly swapping out the old photos for new ones. After one too many new nail holes in my wall, I decided it was time to get down to business and simply change what I was working with. Cue the spray paint.

Boom.

Bang

BAM!

While the paint dried, I printed out some new family photos and picked up a few photo mattes at my friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart. I forgot to get close-ups of the new family snap-shots, sorry. But, trust me, my family is really good looking.

After reassembling the photos with their appointed frames and spending about and hour and a half deciding on a gallery layout, this is what I ended up with.

I am pretty happy with the outcome! I had hoped to be able to spread the pictures, etc., across the two walls. Check! I also craved some kind of continuity or unifying element that would allow the walls actually to smell something along the lines of an eclectic style, instead of the "here is a bunch of random crap I've collected over the years and slapped on the nearest wall" look. 

To help create the look I was going for, I swapped the brown desk chair out for a white one that I had in another room. Not only does the white go well with the new white frames, it also is a better match for my white desk (you can see one of the desk's legs in the photos). The chair's cushion goes well with the warm, yet bright tones in some of the wall hangings as well as the color palette of the bed's quilt (not pictured, see it in an earlier post). I already had the green-black-n-white side table bookcase in the room, only you probably couldn't tell because it was always pushed off in a corner since I couldn't find a satisfactory place to put it in the room. Since I painted the table myself, I was glad to finally be able to fit it comfortably in to the room's layout. 

So, there it is: A new conversation-corner-slash-reading-corner-slash-guest-quarters (the futon lays out for a very comfy sleep arrangement for overnight visitors). It's a far cry from landing on the cover of Elle Decor Magazine, but it will more than do for now. I finished up the arrangement almost three weeks ago and I am still very happy with it. A big change from the previous attempts!