All this time we’ve been happily solving other people’s design dilemmas while silently stewing about our own. This part of the house isn’t on display in our before and after gallery- in fact, we often avoid photographing it altogether. But here it is, in all it’s cringeworthy glory. It’s the other side of our master bedroom (which looks especially bad by comparison to the opposite wall that looks like this).
Back when Sherry surprised me with that big comfy leather chair, we thought it would transform the other side of the bedroom, but with the dog crate and the weird dresser as a side table, the space just wasn’t working.
So here’s how we went about transforming that sorry before of a bedroom wall into this much-easier-on-the-eyes after:
But let us rewind. First, we decided to shop our own house for some objects in hopes of pulling the ultimate switcheroo. We immediately knew we needed something a lot bigger and more vertical to balance the height of the floor-to-ceiling built ins around the bead. So we dragged in our only floor length mirror (which used to live in the third bedroom) for some much needed height. Now the room had a surprise Sherry got for me (the chair) and a surprise I got for her (the mirror was actually a surprise wedding present). Sweet. And the height of the mirror was really working to balance the other side of the room and reflect the swankiest part of the space- the cozy built in bed and the window above it.
We also brought in a little side table we got a while back from Target, but since the mirror and the chair are so big, we knew immediately that the top was too tiny in proportion to the other objects around it.
But that’s actually a pretty easy fix. Luckly, we’re no strangers to making our own pedestal table, so we just hit up Lowe’s for a $19 table top with a bigger circumference. Then we screwed the new 24 inch tabletop right onto the old 16 inch table, and viola, a bigger table that works much better in the space.
And since the new tabletop has only a 4 inch overhang around the Target table’s old top, the pedestal can easily support the new top without it feeling rickety or unsteady.
Then all we needed to do was prime it and paint it white, to echo all the pale colors that are abundant on the other side of the room and to break up all the dark wood and leather. The finishing touches came down to relegating Burger’s crate to another room (he doesn’t mind- honest) and bringing in an oversized vase we found for $14 at Marshall’s- along with some free greenery courtesy of our backyard. Total transformation cost: $33 (our only purchases were the tabletop from Lowe’s and the vase from Marshall’s).
Not too bad, eh? Especially when you consider that we sold the old Ikea dresser that used to be in the space for $30 on Craigslist since we no longer needed it thanks to our bedroom’s new built-in closets. Actual project cost: $3. Oh and for anyone saddened by the displacement of the three sunset pictures that used to hang on the wall, they’re looking great in the third bedroom (which needed some wall art since we stole the big mirror from there).
What about you guys? Do you have any spaces that you made over in your own home (on the cheap or otherwise)? Share and share alike.
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