the bedroom is (sort of) finished!!

After lots of planning (here), I think the bedroom is finished for the most part.  We still have a couple things to do, but overall I am pretty happy with it. I may get a second West Elm rug for the other side of the bed…we need something over the television…we need hardware for all the furniture, and we maybe need something else for the window…maybe?  What do you think?  I would put curtains on the windows, but the radiator is right below it.  I REALLY hate short curtains.  We added those faux wood blinds from Lowe’s (great quality for the price, BTW), but that alone seems unfinished.  I also think that valances look pretty cheesy, although I imagine valances come in many shapes and styles where maybe I’m just not thinking about it enough.  If anybody has any ideas, please, let me know!!  I am at a loss. We also need some accessories – more photos, etc., but we can figure that out eventually!

Source List:

• Bed, dresser and nightstands: Ikea Malm
• Cabinets: Ikea Besta
• Cabinet Doors: Ikea Vara
• Mirrow: Ikea Mongstad
• Bedding: duvet – West Elm Pintuck; coverlet – Target Home; pillows – Target Patio collection
• Rugs: larger one is West Elm Kite Kilim rug and others are from Ikea
• Blinds: Lowe’s Basic Blindz Faux Wood 2″ Plantation Blinds

 

 

the process of bedroom planning….sketchup, pinterest and kuler

Hello, everyone!  This week we are moving to a new place!  Right now we live on the first floor of a duplex built in 1880, but we are moving to a mid-century modern style high rise built in 1966.  A lot of our furniture is pretty modern, but with the move, I think we’re moving a bit more in the modern direction overall – it just suits the space better and will be a nice change of pace.  I am back to my old habit of pre-planning the space in Google Sketchup, starting with the bedroom:

Right now I have a wrought-iron look, higher bed and about four dressers in the bedroom.  We’ve realized that we’re not drawer people.  They never get used! We’ve decided we’re shelf people and hanger people, and are taking this self-realization to the new apartment by putting 3 of the dressers in storage, and making better use of the shelves and the increase in closet space.  Isn’t it funny how it took 29 years of my life and four dressers to realize no amount of drawers are going to make me more organized??! On the other hand, the more shelves I have and the more hanger space I have, the more things get organized. Duly noted.

With that said, that leaves us with 3 black-brown Ikea besta bookshelves we use for storage of shoes, bags, and other small items and a black-brown ikea Malm dresser.

Since we’re definitely using all of those, we are going to swap out the current bed for a more modern Ikea Malm bed as well.  (Sidenote: I know….we have A LOT of Ikea…oh well! We’re renters, and until we own, no reason to spend more money on furniture! Since my living space changes every couple of years, my tastes tend to change at the same pace.  As long as that’s occurring, I have no problem on cheaping out and trying different things! )

We have some black and white artwork, the orange Ikea Mongstad mirror, a green pintuck duvet from West Elm, and as accent pillows on the bed, I have two outdoor pillows from Target that are the “Southwestern Tan Orange Geometric” print.  It’s sort of a southwestern-ikat.

My boyfriend liked the Mongstad mirror in orange when we got it about a year and a half ago.  I would’ve personally gone for the easier-to-match with stuff black-brown color.  Recently Pantone named “tangerine tango” (i.e. reddish orange) the 2012 Pantone Color of the Year….this is pretty much the color of our mirror, and a color I certainly have noticed popping up a lot more recently.  Oddly enough, I also noticed in my Pinterest boards a trend with earthy-tones (reddish/orange, green..) combined with black, white, and brown.  Here are a few that I noticed that to me had a similar feel in color palette:

I really liked this last photo – it is from West Elm, and the combination of grey/green, white, black/brown, and orangey, southwestern print with a modern style to it really reminded me a lot of the type of combination I was envisioning.  I wanted to pull it all into a color palette to view together.  Enter the FREE color palette-making tool, Adobe Kuler.  This free online program from Adobe is really handy.  You can create color palettes in a number of different ways. I opted for the photo-upload function (I uploaded the one above) and from this photo, the color palette was automatically created.  Once I created it, I replaced the very light orange from the picture with my brighter Mongstad mirror orange, and voila!  I have the color palette that I am 90% sure will be the basis of our bedroom:

The sixth color is white, but unfortunately Kuler only lets you combine a maximum of five colors.  So that’s where I’m at with the bedroom! The floors are parquet…We still need to figure out a table lamp/rug/curtain combination as well, but I think I’ve gotten as far as I can with a mix of what I own and modern technology!!!  I’m going to wait until we get all moved in to finish it up.  Isn’t it amazing how much you can do these days with free programs?!?!

The Great Bedroom Organization of 2011….shoes, bags and IKEA Besta

I previously had a large number of shoe boxes on a sagging closet shelf. I complained about my lack of closet space here. The  shoes were hard to reach and I couldn’t fit even one more box into the space.  That’s when I decided to clear it out to make room for other things in the closet.  Consequently, the shoes sat on the dresser at the foot of our bed for about 4 months or so…..

I saw some ideas for shoe storage in Ikea Billy bookcases both over at the Purse Blog on their Purse Blog Forum, and also over at the I am Style-ish blog.  Since we also needed somewhere to store the bf’s shoes, the 11″ deep Billy bookcase just wouldn’t do.  We ended up getting the Ikea Besta bookcase instead, which, at 15.75″ deep, is deep enough to hold the bf’s shoes, some other storage containers and my bags. We got one 47.25″ wide one as well as a one 23 5/8″ one – just wide enough for the spot where they are supposed to go.  We haven’t gotten any doors yet, but we’re going to get the Besta Vara doors. They aren’t quite as nice looking as the many door options the Billy series has, but they will suffice.  We plan to get some decorative knobs to spice them up.

After lots of inventorying and planning, I determined we needed 21 total shelves.  The narrower one came with 4 and the wider with 8, so we needed to purchase 9 extra shelves.

I am still working on the bf’s side – he’s got quite a few shoes and other things that need to be sorted out.