If you’ve been following the blog, you may remember that last year I spoke a lot about our bedroom makeover. Our apartment makeover is pretty much done now… you can see our sports room here, and our living room here… but the bedroom has always been close to my heart. I wanted it to be just perfect.

Here’s a shot of our old bedroom. Although it was at our old apartment, all the components were pretty much the same. The same mattress of the floor, wooden IKEA shelf and lots of boxes!

You may also remember the post I made about our bedroom concepts way back when last year. This was the concept I came up with after lots of brainstorming and soul-searching. The bedroom is really important to me — it’s the place you wake up in to start the day, and the place you rest your mind before going to sleep. It is important to me that it imparts a sense of peace. We wanted something clean that is not too girly, although I did ask that the bedroom could be a little more feminine since the rest of the apartment is quite masculine. I think it is a good compromise, and the green is quite a neutral-gender colour.

So here we go! This is the new bedroom with the makeover! I think we did a pretty good job of staying true to our concepts.

Here are some shots of the bedside tables and highboy under construction

The biggest part of the makeover (and the most time consuming) was the furniture. We bought some old dressers and side tables in French provincial style off Craigslist and completely re-did the hardware, stripped, sanded and painted for many many weeks. The paint is a white antique lacquer finish from Mohawk, and the handles were purchased from Lee Valley. We also painted the handles with metal paint and I think they look really cool and very similar to the design concept. I’m really proud of the beautiful curvy King-size bed that we custom designed and ordered from Vancouver custom woodworker KLK Woodworking. Kelly was really amazing and built the bed that we dreamed of! It has a French style but it is still whimsical to make the room look a bit more modern. To save money, we ordered the bed unpainted and it took several more weeks of sanding and painting to finish it.

The linens and bedding are where we really splurged though. We really pinched our pennies by buying used furniture and getting a custom bed, but the bedding was something I wanted to make sure was good quality and lasted. After months of looking around online and in stores, I FINALLY found the sheets we were looking for! We got our bedding from Terra Nova Interiors downtown. They are gorgeous Italian Sferra sheets… we purchased the “Alice” coverlet, 3 euro shams, and small green throw pillow in the front. The bed sheets underneath are from HomeSense and the two green throw pillows from the Bay.

I am absolutely in love with the scalloped edges and the texture of the linens!

The lighting is also an important part of any room, so it took me about 6 months to find the right lamps. We finally ordered these white Robert Abbey Piero lamps from Chintz and Co downtown. I like how they are modern (following the Oversize design trend this year), but they are still timeless with a classic design (I hope!) .

Here’s a better shot of the bedside tables we re-did and the base of the lamp. I also made the flower arrangements with silk flowers from Chintz, as well as the vase. Picture frame from HomeSense.

Here’s a shot of the view of the bedroom if you were laying on the bed. The tallboy dresser has a flower arrangement I did from Chintz, as well as two silver and glass candlesticks from them as well. The white shelf holding the candles is from IKEA, and the candles and glass holders are from Wal-Mart. It really sets a romantic mood in the dark with lots of light!

The other bedside table has two beautiful mirrored accessories from Nicole Jane Home. I was looking for something mirrored but couldn’t find what I was looking for from other stores. They are actually one of the few stores you can deliver interior design goodies to Canada (they are based in Vancouver!!) and they have a great selection. I literally just ordered the picture frame and jewelry box, so I haven’t even had a chance to change the default photo yet.

The last finishing touch to the room is of course the picture frame, which I had mentioned in the design concepts is an absolute key to the room. It’s an image from the drive to Tofino… a peaceful forest with a rushing stream. It really brings the room together in my opinion, and I love the green in it. I learned how to custom frame a photo myself at Opus Framing on Granville Island! It’s much cheaper than ordering a frame and it’s actually quite easy to do. Highly recommended for the photographers out there.

So that’s it! The room is finally done and I think it’s pretty similar to the design concepts. I am really happy with it, and Allan and I have been sleeping in it for the past 6 months now and we really love it!

What do you think of the makeover?

It’s been a mad dash to try and get everything done for the party this Friday. More than a month of planning, sanding and finishing furniture, sourcing supplies and decorations, and arranging rooms. Realistically, the party would have taken only a couple days to plan and get ready for… but because we are finally making over our apartment, it’s taking a long time.

We moved into our apartment in March; it has been basically 9 months without fully getting our place “finished”. So this party has been a good hard date to aim for to get our place fixed up… but it certainly has been a lot of work for both Allan and I.

This past weekend we managed to finally finish mounting and hanging most of the items that need to be on the wall. The amazing part is how much space it cleared up. I’m planning on doing a room-by-room post, but for today, just a little teaser until I get the finishing touches in place.

This is the “sports room”. A lot of gear has to fit in this room. We finally managed to hang up the surfboards with the handmade wooden racks that we bought. The snowboards are hung up with plastic board mounts. It’s great to get these off the floor… they look so much nicer on the wall. Full room post coming soon.

We also finally managed to finish off the bedroom furniture. Can’t wait to show you before and after photos of the bedroom and also how the furniture looked before the treatment. For now, just a little peek at the paint finish and the new handles we mounted and treated.

Sorry for the short post… more coming soon! So excited that it is all finally coming together.

P.S. Check out the chaos in this room… haha. This is what we’ve been living in trying to get this all finished on time.

I’ve been sick the past two days with a combination of headaches, fevers, and chills. It hasn’t been pleasant at all. And anyone who knows me knows that I hate hate HATE being sick because it keeps me from doing all the things I love to do.

Well, I’ve spent an excessive amount of time couped up in the bedroom. And it drives me stir crazy. So in between lots of feverish sleep and staring at the walls trying to make the dizziness stop… I’ve been starting to put together the concepts for the design of the bedroom. I still have a long ways to go — there’s still the living room, patio, kitchen, bathrooms, and the sports room. But I digress…

So lying in bed, I was running images of peacefulness and calmness through my head. I wanted something that could be an inspiration for the colour palette and the “feel” of the room.

This photo immediately came to mind:

This is one of my favourite stops on the way to Tofino along the winding rivers and streams that cross over the road out there. I love the lush greenery of the forest, the whiteness of the bubbles as the water passes over the rocks swiftly, and the flow and motion to it.

It’s quite hard to incorporate all that into a bedroom. And as I starting working through the concepts, the bedroom turned into something quite different than the picture.

Our living room is quite masculine, so Allan allowed me to make the bedroom a little more soft.

I wanted lots of white, and lots of green. Soft breezy, almost tropical, but still close to home. Lots of textures. And I especially wanted some “distress” in the furniture with a hint of green… kind of how the water “greens” the rocks in the stream over time. I couldn’t find any furniture just like that, so it looks like we’re just going to distress and treat the furniture ourselves… which is better anyway.

Here are the design concepts I’ve been working through for the bedroom:

I’m pretty happy with the concept so far. What do you think? It sure is different than the photograph, but I do feel the colours, “coolness” and peacefulness are well-represented.