Camera 1 Camera 2: Thoughts on bedrooms' beforeses and afterses

The new furniture will be here soon! I've been kept awake waaay too late at night recently thinking of cool shit to do to/for the house. I often cannot correctly (even remotely) estimate distance (or size or time) and so in my mind the boys' rooms are shoe boxes and our room is the size of the freaking pentagon.

So yesterday as I unloaded another chunk of my belongings into our new together-home, I decided to snap a few pics (really, I just needed to get pics of the love seat and bed frame to list on good ol'craigslist and got carried away). But it's turned out to be quite beneficial because now I can kindasorta keep an idea of the space I'm (or am not) working with.

The house is in great shape, minus the random shit lying around because I haven't figured out where to put everything yet, or the piece of furniture that it belongs on/to hasn't yet arrived (i.e. bag of bedding for bunks, bags of sentimental quilts, random cool orange chair and antique trunk, etc.).

Here are a few snaps of each room (camera 1, camera 2!) and my thoughts:

camera 1

The office. A mess of a space, with so much unused wall real estate. My tv will hang above the computer monitor and this is also the room that we'll store the 2nd ps3 (apparently only men think the question "why do we need two ps3s?" is a dumb one). Stephen has a lot of nice framed military themed pictures around the house. I want to corral (all but one of) them and make one large wall collage here - but probably on the opposite wall that the tv is/will be on. I'd also like to see a new desk with a hutch and matching filing cabinet and a taller book shelf. Stephen also has many many military models he's put together over the years - we'll need some display places for those too - floating shelves would work nicely since the models aren't heavy (that's not a fact, I don't know how much they weigh) - I just don't know where to hang the shelves...

camera 2

  

Big Boys' Room. When Stephen moved in he got excited and put a queen bed in both boys' rooms. Even for one boy per room, it's slightly impractical, but especially now (smiles!) - we had to get bunk beds to accommodate two boys living in this room. I have a dresser I've been working on refinishing in a midnight blue color that will go under the window and the bunks will go along the right long wall - that should leave just enough room to utilize the closets and not feel all crammed in, I guess. Also, the small black dresser (there's a matching one in Russ' room) will be used in the master room as "nightstands"; I'll paint or decoupage the drawer fronts in some snazzy fabric or something else clever I find on Pinterest. Our family pictures turned out really nice and I plan to have a large one of just the three boys printed for each of their rooms. A giant map of the world is also a must, but I haven't decided yet how to hang it; Stephen wants to plaster it right to the wall, but I want it to more resemble "wall-art" than a poster Elmer's glued to the wall. Such a girl... Here's the space we're working with: 



 camera 1: "lamp purchased for new room"



camera 2: closet system is in! sort of... it's just leaning against the wall right now, hah!

Russ' Room + our guest bedroom. This room is, so Stephen says, the same size as the big boys' room - minus the extra space from the bump out. I can't believe the visual difference that extra rectangle of space makes. The first thing in this room - the bed will flipped to the opposite wall or under the window (then hanging curtains just-so to make the window appear wider and also to serve as a sort of headboard, if I don't make one) ...and then put the bed on a frame. I've also been toying with the idea of making his headboard by covering an old interior door (from my townhouse) with some batting & fabric - or however the easiest tutorial tells me to do it :) New curtains, extra storage/toy/sitting space and eventually a more useful closet system/space will be incorporated. We'll put Josh's current tall dresser in here somewhere, maybe the closet, and move the small black one to the master, as mentioned before. The quilt Stephen and I picked out a few months ago will stay and I'll be using it to work with the rest of the space (blues, browns, and natural textures like bamboo and linen). 

camera 1

camera 2

And now, our room :) It. is. massive. A massive empty canvas with which to drive me crazy trying to figure out how best to fill it. The natural light is to-die-for. I am often awoken by the indirect sunlight creeping into the room and gently waking me (unlike my better half who is generally jarred awake by "DADDDDYYYYY IT'S TIME TO GET UHHHUUUPP!" from the adjacent bedroom.) Sweet boys. So here's the master plan (har har) - bed in between two small windows, white linens and flowey white linen window dressings, with (and I haven't decided yet which, if not all of these to incorporate) turquoise, coral and gray. I like them all; Stephen likes color and so do I, but I also like clean and crisp. Because the turquoise and coral are so loud I think I can maintain the "crisp" by putting them against white, but ground them with gray. I haven't the foggiest how or where to put each of the colors, except the white, lol. I really like these fabrics from Fabric.com, and I think Stephen will too as he's requested a coastal feeling for our space:

But as I share them with you, I'm reminded of how quickly this could go wrong. So wrong. Here's the 360 of our room:



I'm really excited about the enclave (?) there, I've already claimed it as my "girl space" for some sort of make-up/jewelry hub + a reading chair to pile my "I hate this outfit, I'm changing!" articles of clothing.



imagine here: windows covered in a sheer/linen-y white curtain panel, each of which helps to frame a big beautiful  sleigh bed - a bed flanked by oversized nightstands and tall glass lamps that contrast with the white bed linens and a few fun colors! If/when a wall gets painted, it will be this one. For now, I like the beige blank canvas.

the room swallows this bed. I wonder if it would still seem small if it were not banished to the far end of the room?

Pretty standard but lots of space to screw up! Stephen might get color, but it might be more along this less-poppy color palette:

I guess I could still add in a coral colored throw to spice it up a bit; but maybe I really need to follow these paint can lids as guidance - otherwise I panic and bad things happen.

So what do you think? Take a chance with un-guided color choices or be safe with a Martha Stewart approved color palette?

Today I'm going after work to pick up our new craigslist find - a new kitchen table! It's purdy. Boat shaped, dark wood that seats 4 or 6. I'm really just excited to not have to use so much Windex now (glass table + 3 little boys = sucks.)

I knew this post would be lengthy so I intentionally only included the bedrooms - but the other rooms are just over the blog-orizon.