After nearly ten years, and four moves to three different states, I have a styled master bedroom!  Honestly, I cannot even begin to put into words how excited I am.  When we have moved it has always seemed that other spaces come first and we never quite make it to our own.  Now, at last, Audley and I have a teenager-free space all our own.

And it is quite lovely indeed.

Deciding what to do with our room has actually been an ongoing process for right at a year now.  Color decisions, budget, and a lack of time to actually pull it all together were the largest factors in our delay.  Then a few weeks back, Audley & I finally just made it happen and lets just say sometimes you say forget the budget and pull out the credit card.

Color…. well, it just doesn’t happen for me.

 This is what we started with.

It was not a very welcome space for exhausted parents to escape to in the evenings for sure.  In fact, it was such a miserable space for me that I even hated folding clothes and putting them away as often as I should because I couldn’t bear to be in there.

This is the color of the walls when we moved in.  I could’ve dealt with chocolate-brown, even with my dark furniture, but this lackluster color of brown reminded me of too many diapers I have changed in my life.

I love the Kentucky Derby print of Audley’s, but let’s be honest, hanging it with horseshoes over the bed was not the best design choice I ever made.

I just wanted something on the walls.

And if our room wasn’t unattractive enough we had these awful swinging blinds hanging over the picture window that came with the house.

When it came to budget and color the two actually had to work hand in hand. We have a very strange aqua colored carpet throughout our entire house.    While I do like it to some extent, it does make for challenging decorating decisions.  While one day I would like to replace the carpet, it’s definitely not in our budget now.  Nor is new furniture.

The bedroom suite Audley and I have now is 12 years old.  We saved and saved to purchase this making it very special to me.  It was very traditional in style and with its dark wood.  I wanted whatever we decided to do in the bedroom to accommodate our existing furniture. While painted furniture is pretty I do not like an entire room of painted furniture, so the dark wood is completely my style.

Using our aqua colored carpet and dark wood as our base we started thinking and wondering what would look the best.

That was actually easier than what I thought it would be. As I was walking through Costco (of all places) I found a 6 piece bedding set for $125.00 that just spoke to me.

It really did.

Gray and white became the perfect color solution for our bedroom.

So I bought the bedding set,a nd headed home where it sat for almost year waiting on us to make time to finish making choices and do this room!

When Audley and I decided to just take a plunge and do our weekend makeover I spent several hours at Home Depot matching color.  We are very partial to Behr paint, so I didn’t even consider another brand.

After pondering over the different shades of gray in our bedding set I finally settled on Behr’s “Centre Stage” as the perfect color for our space.  I purchased two gallons of the silvery color in Behr’s Premium Plus formula.

While out and about getting ready for our project we also purchased plastic drop cloths to protect the carpet, Frog tape for the trim, a small Purdy paint brush for cutting in the edges and corners,  paint rollers and pans, and rags for clean-up without ruining towels or wash cloths at the house.

Audley moved all of the furniture with the help of our son.  I dusted the trim so we could apply the Frog tape (very necessary if you want your painters tape to stick), and we laid the plastic drop cloths out to keep our carpet protected from paint.  While Audley cut in the corners and around the doors and windows, I began rolling the walls.  We debated whether or not to use a paint sprayer, but decided the space was too small.

The only other “tool” we needed for our little project was this platform ladder made by Werner that has become a fixture in all our home projects.   We purchased this one at Lowes about eight years ago and couldn’t do without it!

Since Behr Premium Plus paint is such great quality, we were able to cover the old brown color fairly easily with one coat, which dried in two hours, then we quickly rolled a second coat to make sure all the lines and streaks were blended.

By 9:00 Saturday evening we were putting furniture back in place and added the accessories to the walls and tabletops on Sunday afternoon.

Since this was a budget makeover, I was excited to not only find a gorgeous contemporary mirror at Costco, but also a gorgeous set of crystal lamps with ….. gray shades!

I used Cree light bulbs in our lamps.  Yes, I know they are a more expensive option, but after being introduced to these fabulous bulbs at the Haven Conference last summer we have slowly been transitioning over to them.  Our house is 35 years old, so the wiring is often not our friend.  Cree bulbs are the new energy-saving bulbs and where we were blowing and changing traditional light bulbs monthly throughout the house, we have not changed a single Cree bulb in nearly a year.

So overall they are saving us money.

We also had a couple of pen and ink sketches of rooms from the Biltmore Estate that we wanted for our walls.  I love these collectible prints and the element of old that they added to our semi-contemporary space.  Mixing elements is something I really like in decorating our home.

Final touches to the room included a TV mounted on the wall, something I swore we would never have in our room (I’ll explain the reason we decided this when I reveal the entire room) and green plants.

This is just the behind the scenes of our new room.  Stop back by this weekend for the full reveal!