I can't believe February is over. And I can't believe in my first month of blogging I missed a week! Last week was all about me and my little man, Bass. Sometimes the joy, along with the full throttle aspect of mommy-dom, can make social media seem like an impossible mountain to climb. So last week I didn't climb, I just chilled with my boy. And it was great!
Another thing I can't believe is that it's going to be Bass's 2nd birthday next Tuesday. What the hell? Where did that time go? My original due date was February 27th. Last Monday I kept dating everything 2/27/10 - because that date will forever be burned into my memory along with the fact that it took him over a week to finally make his appearance, and he didn't make it willingly, lol. So that got me thinking about this weeks blog post and how this time of year I remember everything I did to get ready for baby. I completely designed his room and my master bedroom from scratch and made almost everything by hand. It was a labor of love and I wish I had better pictures of both rooms. I have decent ones of the Master so I wanted to share that project today.
This was my former Master Bedroom. It was amazing... A round room in an old turret in a 1880's Victorian in Oakland, CA. I loved this room, but I had the hardest time designing it so it was functional and pleasant to wake up in. It had been painted a horrible "caution" orange from the previous tenant and was painted horribly at that. To make the orange liveable I bought jeweled toned bedding from IKEA in dark purple and a reddish orange (totally not my color scheme at all - but I was making do) and I hung jeweled toned drapery over the windows as well as the opening to the room because there wasn't a door to close. Another feature of the turret was that the landlord never finished the ceiling. When I moved in it was covered in this disgusting plastic sheeting, that when I finally removed it, about a million dead lady bugs came pouring down - so GROSS! Before I pulled the sheeting down I thought I would buy some cheap, but decent, fabric and cover it up. Well, the uppermost point of the ceiling was approximately 30' high and there were 2x4's blocking my ability to get all the way up and make the turret look clean and streamlined. The end result was that I felt like I was sleeping under a nuclear smoke cloud ready to explode at any time. Not very restful... (I don't have any pics of the ceiling)
Before
This picture is actually too kind ~ visually speaking. It was taken during a party for which I had done my best to make the room look nice. With the right amount of cocktails, soft candle light and the little changes I made, my friends thought it was lovely. In the sobering daylight... they changed their minds. ;-) I also hung two of my paintings to make the room more bearable - they're in the back flanking either side of the middle window.
After
The first thing I did was get a ladder and tore down all the fabric and plastic covering the ceiling. I was worried about what I would find underneath, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was just the insulation set between 2x4's and since the insulation was covered in a brown paper, just like craft paper, I left it as is - after checking Google to see if the insulation had any qualities that would make it dangerous to keep uncovered.
The second step was to find a warm white to cover up the orange. Just that made a HUGE impact and already the room was more peaceful.
Third step was to come up with a design for the round bed - yes I know, a round bed in a round room - kind of odd. But it was actually pretty perfect, other than it just floated in the room. There was no headboard, no side tables that would fit, totally frustrating. To deal with this, I designed a rounded headboard that was fixed to the wall. It had two pieces that I upholstered in a great faux white leather, very soft to the touch and on the eyes as it had a slight matte finish to it. Because there were two separate pieces of the headboard, I built shelves behind the 18"H panels to hold books, lamps, flowers, etc. which made the whole piece functional in several aspects, and that is always a positive when designing. I would have liked to have made the headboard longer but the clearance was such, with the curve of the room, that any longer and it would have been impossible to get behind it.
After I tore the fabric down, painted the walls, and installed the headboard, I designed and made all the decorative bedding. Two of the pillows and the window treatments are covered in white silk, which I backed with muslin, and accented them with a black grosgrain ribbon for the pillows and a black & white polka dot ribbon for the roman shades. The two Euro shams are covered in a faux white angora, very soft and fun to lounge on. The lumbar pillow has a combination of the silk and angora with black grosgrain ribbon to separate the fabrics. All in all, I was really happy with the end result as was my sweet Bass. I included some pictures from a photo shoot I did with him when he was 3 months old for his dad's first Father's Day.
I'm sure you already get the point, but Bass was just so cute, I can't help including more photos.
So, that's it for today! I hope you enjoyed reading about my little interiors project and please let me know if you have any questions as I can write a DIY post about what I made so you can make them for yourself. Thanks for visiting and once again, Happy Friday!!
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