The AO House: Master Bedroom

Our master bedroom design started with a set of bedroom furniture that used to belong to Mama Jo (Carter's grandmother). The set includes a chest of drawers, vanity and lovely four poster bed. The bed is a double, so we'll be saving it for a guest room down the road, but I knew I wanted to use the chest of drawers and vanity.

Our previous bedroom had used black furniture and cool tones of white and light aqua blue (now in one of our guest rooms). With this "new" set of brown furniture, I was looking for warm, neutral tones that would lend themselves well to a gender neutral space. The word I kept thinking was "handsome".

I luckily found my inspiration fabric soon after we moved in, and from there, I was able to pick out coordinating pieces and created my designBoard. Do you remember it?

To make the below "after" images that much more exciting, here is a picture of our bedroom "before".

We live in a cape cod style home with slanted ceilings in our upstairs bedrooms, which Carter and I really love, but it does make furniture arranging a bit tricky since you can't push furniture up against 90% of your walls.

So, here is our bedroom now...

Since I found my inspiration fabric pretty early on, the design had been swimming around in my head for about a year before we actually got around to painting the room and putting it all together. And, I will say that everything came together just like I wanted and I didn't stress about it...don't you love it when that happens? (probably because I had about a year to think everything through and thus didn't make any rash choices that I later regretted!)

Some highlights for those interested:

- Paint is "Desert Camel" by Behr and I love it. Truly the perfect shade of tan/khaki for our room. Worked well with our lighting, and we painted our ceiling the same shade, which you can't really tell in the pictures, but it helped break up the choppiness of our sloped ceiling since the edges now blend together.

- The bed is the low profile "Louis" from Ballard Designs. The headboard is made of cane (hence why the light is streaming through it) - it was one of two furniture splurges for the house and we love it.

- Khaki blanket and "tufted" comforter are from Target. I bought the blanket one size too large to make sure that it tucked all around the bed since it is exposed when the bed is made.

- I opted for a DIY box-spring cover to keep the look of the bed clean with no skirt. Instructions to come tomorrow!

- The fabric I used on the back of the decorative pillow, Soleil Sun Stripe in Mocha by Waverly, is what I used for our curtains and our boxspring cover. Stripes strike again.

- Mama Jo's vanity serves as my nightstand/vanity and laptop desk on occasion. I found the bamboo tray on eBay, and the other knick knacks at HomeGoods. My vanity chair is a very nice hand-me-down from my sister-in-law. I just found some new fabric to recover the seat.

- Don't you love Carter's nightstand? It was one of my favorite finds for the room - the legs make me happy. It's from HomeGoods.

- Celadon lamps bring out the blue in my inspiration fabric. They are gorgeous and have a beautiful Chinoiserie gold finial. Christmas presents from my m-i-l.

- Bamboo shade is from Overstock (and we have inexpensive mini blinds that tuck behind it that we actually use for privacy).

- Mismatched sunburst mirrors are from HomeGoods (do you see a pattern here?).

If I find a good rug, I would consider it for the room to bring in some more color, but we like the look of bare floors as well.

I only took the "money shot" of the space, because the other areas of the room aren't quite finished. The chest of drawers/closet area is pretty plain (I'm upholstering a bench on this side of the room) and we have a deep nook which is empty at the moment. We're contemplating a reading chair/ottoman situation.

DIY box spring cover instructions on tap for tomorrow.

p.s. I took the bedroom pictures kind of randomly one morning when the light was good, so excuse my wrinkly sheets and my non-perfectly-styled bed. But, this is what the room actually looks like in real life, so that's better anyway, right? (Actually, throw a shirt or two on the vanity chair and some scattered shoes and my hair dryer hanging out of a drawer, and then you'll get the true picture).