one room challenge // bedroom week 5

Eeep! This is it! Week 5 of the One Room Challenge hosted by Calling It Home. That means that next week is the big reveal! And oh man...we have quite a little bit to finish.

This past week was really full with family visiting and a little birthday party for my youngest, so we hardly got any work done on the bedroom at all!

I finally finished painting the window, and Ryan finished spray painting the drapery rod gold. I was really excited when he got it hung. I decided to hang it super far outside the window frame to make it look like a wall of windows, like in a hotel.

The rod is from cb2, and the drapes and rings (they sell brass ones in the store) are from Target. I am very particular about drapes (so many inexpensive ones just look so cheap), but I'm quite pleased with the quality of these Threshold drapes. They are a nice weight and the texture looks a bit like linen. I even left them somewhat wrinkled after washing them for that linen effect. I have four panels total to hang so they span the entire wall. This picture shows one panel:

The window looks mahoosive with all of them up. I will save the full effect for next week, but what a difference white trim and wide-hung curtains can make! The sad, burgundy-clad window is now a real statement in the room.

The only other thing we got done besides the window was staining some new legs for the bed.

The bed we got has short black tubes for legs- they're stumpy and generic, and it's small details like that that can make the difference between high-end and not-so-high-end furniture. So I found new legs at Menard's for about $2.50 each. I love the style:

After a little wood stain they now look stunning!

Much more refined and classy than black tube stumps. All we know so far though, since the bed hasn't been assembled yet, is that they will fit. They are more slender than the original legs, so I don't know for sure if they'll be the right height & scale. I feel like they should be, but ya never know.

The other detail about the bed that I don't like is that there is a high gap between the bed frame and the bottom of the headboard. I get that manufacturers do that to save a few dollars, since no one sees that gap behind a mattress anyway. But in the case of this bed, the headboard stands up on black poles that are actually visible, and if you forgo a box spring (which I want to, to keep the height low), then the gap is very large. So. Ryan is going to try to hang the headboard directly on the wall with some cleats, instead of keeping it freestanding on its ugly poles. Again, we have no idea how this will look or if it can be done. 

Now that we've finished the window and the center light is close to done (6, 708 trips into the attic and counting...), we're almost able to clean out the construction stuff and have the floor space to assemble the bed frame. Obviously we'll have to sometime in the next 6 days!

Tomorrow I'm finally going to a great vintage store to look for nightstands. The perfect thing has to be there. I'm very insistent that the nightstand has to be vintage- I want this room to really reflect my heart for "Found & Foraged" design. Use what's on hand? Check. Bring nature in? Check. Make something? Check. Shop vintage? Well, I need some more of that. 

I feel like this room could easily feel too new and too out-of-a-box if I'm not careful. When your bed is new from Target, and your drapes and linens are Target and Ikea, you do need to be intentional about pursuing other sources to keep a "gathered" feel in the space. And I'm going to intentionally skip a lot of accessories so the nightstand is really my last opportunity to bring in a piece with character. 

That's a lot up in the air but I feel like it's still doable! Check back next week to see if we pull it off! 

Thanks again for challenging us Linda! I can't wait to see how everyone else is handling crunch time...