Saturday, June 25, 2011

Make a room feel brand-new... for free!

A blog I've recently fallen in love with is the Thrifty Decor Chick. Her tagline is "Sharing simple, inexpensive ways to decorate your home." She'll find something she likes on other sites, or at Pottery Barn, etc. and do it herself for less than half the price of the original. Or she'll just come up with amazing decorating ideas on her own. Her house is a work-in-progress, and she takes great pictures throughout the process. I think my favorite part is that her work is just my style. Often I'll see decorating ideas (especially in my BHG magazine), and think ewww... But Sarah is a girl after my own heart.

When I started writing this post, I was sure I'd gotten the following idea from her. But I searched and searched the last few months of her blog and can't find it anywhere! *blush* Now I'm feeling silly for attributing this idea to her when I really have no idea where it came from... But you should still check out her blog. It's amazing.

Anyway... the idea. I read and saw pictures somewhere about decorating the master bedroom.


We have a pretty simple, semi-small bedroom. This picture was from shortly after we moved in, in October 2009. The bed is against the east wall, a window on the north wall, the closet and outer door on the south wall, and door to the bathroom on the west wall (behind the photographer). Yes it's only a full-size bed, it's what we've always had, and we like it. :)

Fast forward a year and a half. We still have this exact same layout. I'd never considered anything else. Then I saw a post (somewhere...) about using a window as a headboard. Really? The window? We don't have a regular headboard, so I looked at the room, rotated everything 90 degrees in my head (or is it -90 degrees, Rocky?? :), and thought maybe it would work.

No pictures of the redecorate-in-progress. Not even of the full-length mirror that crashed against the cedar chest and broke into a bazillion pieces (thanks to the crazy cat...).

And here is what we ended up with:


Tada! Our full-size bed fits under the window PERFECTLY!! Since my nightstand is smaller than Rocky's, there was quite a bit of extra space to the left of it, and so I went downstairs and found a working halogen lamp. And as I moved the cedar chest I remembered it had all our extra pillows in it, so I took a few out to buff up the "headboard" space. Look what you can do to make a space brand-new, without buying a single thing!!

Of course now we have a huge blank wall...


Hmmm what to do with it... Any ideas??



7 comments:

  1. Fun! Love the end result. Props to you for liking your full-sized bed. Justin and I had one for the first 4 years of our marriage and hated it! We're sprawlers. Haha. With your blank wall, I would do a big collage of random cheap thrift store frames all spray painted the same color.

    Oh, and re: your comment on my blog - my wisdom teeth never bothered me until a year or so ago. I'd wait as long as you can to get them out. I was crying to my mom this morning that I can't believe I paid money for someone to do this to me. It's brutal!! Haha.

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  2. I would try a large painting/wall art/mirror for the empty wall OR if you've ever seen 'gallery' walls where there are lots of frames & pictures?

    Just my two cents :)

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  3. Nice work! Love Thrift Decor Chick, too! Have you ever been to Tatertots & Jello? Or Remodelaholic.com? Sheesh. Addictive. Anyway, I agree with the others who said pictures with lots of frames. Pick up a bunch of pretty frames at the thrift store or garage sales, spray paint them (spray paint is my new best friend) all the same - black or white or silver, and then do your favorite photos - all in b&w or sepia or something for a cool effect. Another super artistic idea I saw once was a large canvas (using your 40% off coupon at Michael's or something) with all different colors of paint chips in rows to make some modern & colorful art. Another friend painted all different colors of circles (within her color scheme - different hues, etc.) in rows on canvas. That would go nicely with your bedspread, I think. My favorite is pictures, though. :)
    ~Julie Ball

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  4. It looks great! I would go with what everyone else said and get a bunch a frames painted to match and put something pretty in them. I love keeping pretty pictures from old calendars. I have a couple that I'd like to take apart and use in our bathroom when it gets remodeled.

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  5. I just read this post about something to hang in a big empty space... http://cleansmartsimple.blogspot.com/2011/06/formfunction-wall-clocks.html
    I don't know why that isn't turning into a link, but it works to copy and paste

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  6. Thanks guys! I've actually thought of the b&w idea before... we have 3 pictures in our living room right now that are b&w (one of which is an engagement photo with a huge mat around it that was our wedding guestbook) that I'd considered moving to the bedroom even before I thought of this whole re-arranging thing. We've got some neat ideas for the living room walls where the photos currently are... once we get a little bit of $$ we can justify putting towards it :)

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  7. Love the change! Admittedly - I'm jealous of the option of change.... Or bedroom is laid out that there is only one possible option for arranging it. :S
    If you do decide to go with lots of frames - what I did on our stairway wall that faces the dining room is put a bunch of photos of family up in all different sizes (wallet to 11x14) all in wood frames - all different types, from bare unfinished to dark walnut stain. The start of my wood-frame collection was from a garage sale, but you can get wood frames from WalMart for $3 each. The good thing about them not matching is you don't have to worry about wanting to add another and not being able to match it later (or having to paint it to match). And the wood would look good against the color of your wall.
    Thanks for the website to check out! I'll be checking out Thrifty Decor Chick.

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