Tag: Bedroom

The Victorian House: The Second Floor Bedrooms

Up the stairs…

This will be our bedroom.

The closet has amazing potential. Also, there is a random sink inside that doesn’t work. Yay!

There is no central air in the house, but there are transom windows above each of the doors off the hallway for air circulation.

Here’s the second bedroom on the second floor. We think this one will be for August.

And here’s the last bedroom on the second floor, most likely Eleanor’s. I did have to reassure her that we could add some blue to the room, because she really liked the stripes that August got.

And the house even comes complete with another porch upstairs, like the one off of my office. It’s small, but charming.

* Edit: In an earlier version of this post, I mentioned the location of the porch in relation to the other rooms. I’ve since come to the conclusion that it would be better omit that information.

August 28, 2013
Eleanor’s New Room Wish List

Blue!

That’s it. Just blue. Dark blue, to be specific. And a new bed because according to Eleanor, her Jenny Lind bed is old. (Kid, I bought that for you a whopping two and a half years ago. It is not old.)

After our little video interview, I asked her to look at my Pinterest board of kids’ bedroom ideas, and to tell me if she liked any of them. Right away, she zeroed in on the one I expected.

Not dark, but a very pretty shade of blue. Below is the other girl’s bedroom in that house. At first I thought it was the same room from a different angle, but no. Variations on that blue are used exclusively throughout the house.

The wallpaper in each room was designed and hand-printed by Marthe Armitage, and the photographs are by Francois Halard for Vogue. And be sure to check out the comments at the end of the article, if you read it. “Delicious!”

After seeing those rooms, not only does she want blue, Eleanor wants wallpaper too. I swear to you — there was no prompting on my part. I was kind of a proud mama! Except… the house we’re buying already has five (maybe six?) rooms with wallpaper. Even if we did add another, because we may, I’m not sure if it would be in one of the kid’s rooms. What Eleanor wants at age 4 is not going to be what she wants a few years from now and paint is so much easier to change. I have considered wallpaper for her room before, but I’ll have to think about it before making a decision one way or the other.

And about that bed. She was not too into the idea in the video, but when I showed Eleanor a picture of her bed, in blue, she liked it. So maybe a little painting is in our future after all.

Glo-bo!

July 22, 2013
The Bedroom’s Mini-Makeover

Coral & Gray, with Black & White Details

The bedroom is looking a bit different these days. The shell of the room is the same. Same charcoal gray walls, same layout, same bed. All the furniture is the same, actually. The only changes have been the bed linens and the botanical print from the living room.

I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to keep the lighting fixture in the room. Both kids want to swing from it.

Details, texture…

The book situation, as usual, is a little out of hand. The bookshelf is starting to see books stacked two deep, and Brandon and I each have stacks on top of, underneath, and to the sides of our bedside tables. The library bookshelves are already full though.

The black and white pillows and throw were from IKEA, and the coral bedding was from west elm. Little changes (only a mini-makeover, remember), but I love the look.

July 26, 2012
Lazy Morning

I intended to just show you the new coral bedding, but I like these photos a whole lot more than a well-made bed.

I have new decorative pillows to add, and a cute throw blanket too. All black and white, all from IKEA. I picked them up when we got the new outdoor table. I’ve also hung the botanical print in the bedroom since snapping these. E supervised. I’m not sure about it, but it’s huge and maybe I need to get used to it.

I painted my IKEA closet doors white. Ages ago. Did I ever show them? They could still use another coat of paint before I really call them done.

This is a funny work week, with the Fourth of July smack in the middle. It feels like everyone is off with their families, and so I hope you’ll indulge me in the sharing of mine. Feel free to concentrate on the new bedding if that’s more your thing. It’s under these fine people.

July 2, 2012
Kathryn’s Bedroom in Adore Home Magazine

I helped a reader of Making it Lovely, Kathryn, with her bedroom not long ago. It was a fun project to work on, and the room is now featured in the new issue of Adore Home, an Australian online magazine!

The coverage of Kathryn’s bedroom starts on page 120.

Thanks, Adore Home.

February 6, 2012
Kathryn’s Finished Bedroom

I have been working with American Express to redo a room for a reader.

I’ve been busy redecorating a bedroom for Kathryn and her husband, Finn. They live in Oak Park with their two kids, and they asked for some help with finishing their bedroom. The space was an attic once upon a time, but previous homeowners had remodeled it. Poorly. They longed to make it feel more put together, but their kids came first and the bedroom kept getting pushed back. I showed the space to you, in progress, last week. Now the room is finished though, and I love the way it turned out! I think Kathryn and Finn are pretty darn happy too.

American Express had provided a $1500 budget, and I used their Prepaid Card to help keep me on track. It was great because I could login to check my balance anytime I wasn’t sure, which was so helpful while decorating quickly and on a tight budget.

Kathryn and I swapped the Prepaid Card back and forth a few times as I would send her to pick up things like painting supplies and the wardrobe, and then I took it back to get the smaller decorative details. I was even able to pull a little cash out to pay for the end table I found on Craigslist.

Lighting was my biggest concern when it came to budget. The room is large, but it only has one window. And that window? It directly faces their neighbor’s bathroom. Not exactly a room with a view.

I wanted to be sure to provide plenty of light, but nice lamps tend to be expensive. It’s fairly easy to find inexpensive furniture that still looks good, but lamps are different for some reason. Luckily, I found some clear glass lamps on sale. They had a clean, simple shape with good proportions, and the added detail of the blue cord gives them some interest.

Originally, I thought I might put one lamp on the gateleg table and put the floor lamp I picked up on the other side, but I thought the room needed symmetrical lamps to balance the mismatched tables. The floor lamp ended up on the other side of the room, next to Kathryn’s pair of Eames chairs. A small task lamp that the homeowners already had was perfect on top of their dressers.

I hung art and photos that the homeowners already had in black frames, along with the print at the bottom that I created for them.

The doors to the kids’ bedrooms were curtained off. Perhaps Kathryn and Finn will add a sliding barn door in the future, but for now the curtains are a good solution. Such a simple thing to do, but it made a huge difference. Instead of feeling like an open area between two smaller rooms, it feels like a bedroom in its own right. The freestanding closet that we added helps too.

There were already four dressers in the room, but two were used as bedside tables and two were hidden beneath pipe and drape along the slanted end of the room. Pushing all four of them together made them look more deliberate in the space, and it was fun to decorate the top.

I loved working on a room in someone else’s home, and I hope to do more work for others in the future. Thanks, American Express for making this one possible. And thank you, Kathryn and Finn, for letting me takeover a room in your home!

* I’ll answer questions about where everything came from in the comments, but you can also check my Pinterest board for the room. Nearly everything (and more) is on there!

November 30, 2011