Bedroom Makeoverhill #1

First things first: I am a terrible blogger. You were warned, gentle reader, that I was going to be bad at this - though I don't think either of us expected me to fail this badly. For a person who rocks an awful lot of deadlines in his professional life, I seem to disregard them completely in my blogging life. Yin and yang? Anyhill (see what I did there?), I suppose I am back in the blogging saddle.

Numero deuce: Makeoverhilling is hard work, y'all. Especially around holiday times. To anyone looking to move: do it in August. Sure, you'll probably get heat stroke and some serious moving chafe, but at least you won't have to move, unpack, reacquaint yourself with your new surroundings, learn (the hard way) the dark path from bed to turlet, AND shop for your second cousin's Christmas toe-socks while consuming 4 times your normal daily calories. That has been me all month along: Sluggo-shoppo-unpacko-wrappo-eato-sickopotamus. Welcome to my watering hole.

In between my bouts of shopping and wrapping (shrapping, I guess), I did manage to log some good hours of Makeoverhilling. What I learned from my last apartment (and from reading lots of shelter blogs) is that people tend to put off designing/decorating their bedroom until the end of the move-in process. I have certainly been guilty of it in the past, my logic being: "I'm (presumably) the only person that will really see and enjoy this space, so I should focus my efforts on the more public spaces of my home." Logical, right? Wrong. This time around, it went something like: "P, you're going to be at this a while, so make yourself a happy place, a retreat, and you'll at least have one night spot that'll be the first and last thing you see on either side of your wonky sleep times. Also, you can't camp out on E and K's sofa, so man up and get a bed." Essentially, I took a "Treat Yo'self" attitude towards Makeoverhilling.

So, with my crazy self-talk permission, I decided to tackle my bedroom.

I had a whole folder on my desktop of bedroom ideas and stuff I wanted to buy: the perfect cobalt blue trellis rug, the perfect black iron bed, the perfect black spindle chair, the perfect yellow bedside lamp. All of it went out the e-window. The lamp? Backordered til January. The bed? Out of stock with no expected restock date. The rug? Kind of expensive, even for a "Treat Yo'self." The spindle chair? Without the related lines of the bed, it would be as out of place as me at a football game. The best laid plans...am I right?

What did I have to start with? White dressers (2), white nightstands (2), a fun woven coverlet in the brightest yellow ever (an impulse buy from CB2 for the "guest room" (read: air mattress in the living room) at my old place),  a nifty pendant light that I could certainly use (I love a good pendant or chandelier in the bedroom), and a mattress (no bed frame or headboard, though). And a wall color. I had committed to a wall color: Valspar's "Winter In Paris" with their "Swiss Coffee" as a trim. France and Sweden (and Providence). How to make this stuff work?

2 words: Dash & Albert. 2 more words: striped rug. 2 more words: Tequila Sunrise. It had my pale blue AND the bright yellow. It also had some red, orange, chartreuse, and white. If anyone out there has seen "The Big Lebowski," you will know what I mean when I say that this was the rug that would "tie the room together." This was a rug to wake up to. It's not for everyone, but it's for me. My retreat is candy-colored. Deal with it.

I can fall asleep looking at this. Proof that I can sleep anywhere and under just about any conditions.

Once that was decided, it became incredibly easy to source the rest of the stuff. The white bed is actually a sort of geometric canopy situation that I found at Ikea. With a little editing (aka selective ignorance of the assembly instructions), I left off the top members and ended up with a lovely white fourposter number. Not content with the amputee stump look of the top of the posts, I went in search of finials that could be painted white to match the rest of the bed. What I found at The Home Depot was so much better: unfinished furniture feet. Sure, they're a little overscale, and they don't match the bed, but I think they're perfect. They bring a touch of masculinity to the space, too. A little natural wood really got it away from Lisa Frank territory (not that there's anything wrong with that).

If this bed ever lands upside down, it'll feel right at home on its feet.

Dear Target: I love you.

 Milk (glass knobs): It does a body (-conscious blogger's dresser) good.

Other bedroom additions were: antique blue milk glass knobs for the top drawers on everything, a white Jonathan Adler-esque lamp for the one nightstand (Ha! One Night Stand! Get it???), a yellow mini-trash-can, a yellow "Keep Calm..." print in a natural wood frame, and a white cardboard deer bust. It's "Skittles meets Scandinavian." Skittdinavian.

Keep calm and refrain from telling me that this poster is "soooooo 2009."

This picture is rubbish. Pictured: rubbish.

 All in all, the bedroom turned out swell. I've tastefully cropped the TV out of there, but I'm totally one of those people that watches TV in bed. I like TV. Sue me. On second thought, don't sue me. Instead picture me asleep under my retina-searing yellow coverlet, drooling on my pillow, my TV on (at a very low volume), dreaming my fuschia-unicorn-laden Lisa Frank dreams. Don't you feel superior to me now?

"Magical." - Drew Barrymore

Blog out.
P