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Welcome to Olya!
Hey guys,
I'm writing in with a bedroom renovation I finished 5 days ago, as a surprise for my boyfriend. We are both students who live in a tiny basement apartment in Toronto. The renovation was very simple, but I hope you will like the simple final result...
The headboard is IKEA, but found it on the street right outside our building. It matches the brown dresser which also came with the apartment. (sorry for the poor photograph of the dresser - it has flowers on it now, pink tulips!)
Futon frame + (a new!) mattress makes for a nice bed. Sheets are from Walmart (cross border shopping), bed cover is from Cosco - both are very muted olive green. Rug is a lighter muted olive green from IKEA.
Tables came with the apartment - I polished them.
Lamps are IKEA too. I had many others that I'd love to have far more, alas the budget of $20-30/lamp made all others either tacky or too expensive. (You can see the old lamp on the side in the before photo).
The highlight and feature of the bedroom is the painting on the wall. I asked a friend who is a student in design to create an abstract-organic painting - something soft enough for a bedroom, but abstract enough that it would not be flowery. The bedroom got repainted into 2 Behr colors: the white is called "Toasted Marshmellow", and is absolutely fantastic soft white. The focus wall is Dark Ash, also Behr. The mural is painted with very very very light blue that I had left over from a living room wall (from some local paint company that I can't find online). The light blue in the design glows at night from the window light, and makes the gray look slightly blue tinted.
I also attached a "before" (more in progress of clean up) photograph, in case you want to post it as well. It reflects the size of the room pretty well.
Another key of this renovation was sorting and cleaning out the single closet and dresser we share - it is now decluttered, and organized to the max. See photograph of all my sweaters in the dresser as an example.
Many thanks for a great community on tiny spaces!
Cheers,
- Olya, Tim and cat Lawrence.
n the risk of sounding obsessive, I took a photograph of the other side of the room, as its not shown at all on the other photographs.
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Looked fabulous, loved the painting. Then I saw the "before" pictures. Now it looks FABULOUS!
Nice job!
WOW! huge change. it really looks great. you didn't tell us what the boyfriend's reaction was? i think you may have convinced me to not paint my whole bedroom one color as well. originally i wanted to paint my bedroom red, with a red on red wall graphic (a photograph that we'll develop onto a wall), but i'm worried it'll be too dark and we love bright rooms, maybe a warm white will be good for the other walls. thanks for sharing!
WOW! That looks fantastic. I really like your color choice for the accent wall. It sets off your graphic nicely. Great job.
Loves it! Simple, fun, didnt break the bank. What really good design should be about.
Wow, that looks great!
love it!
This is just lovely. It's very warm and, I can imagine, has made your bed a very cozy place to be. Great color choice to work with the tile and remaining walls. Toasted Marshmallow -- ummmm. This is one for the AT 'Color Vault.'
Thank you very much everyone!
Boyfriend? He loved (and loves) it :-)
I also painted the hallway orange, and made a tiny bar near the kitchen.
This would be utterly impossible to do without my friends! Best resource for any renovation is someone who is willing to listen to your gripes and moans about how all the great stuff is in the U.S. and costs too much ;)
wow, now THAT's inspiring. :)
Amazing changes, and congratulations on doing it so inexpensively. I shuddered at the thought of pink tulips on the dresser, but I quite like most else of what I see. The bed area looks very serene; I love the colors you chose for this space. Very well done!
Clarification: I only "shudder" at the pink tulips if you painted them on the dresser, which you probably didn't (why would anyone?!). A coworker just proudly showed me photos of how she defaced perfectly nice furniture with horrid "folk elements" and those atrocious visions were still in my head when I read about the tulips. Sorry! I'm sure your room looks great and you are really satisfied with all of your hard work.
i LOVE it! the mural is gorgeous---very inspiring.
i gotta ask, though, where's all your stuff? books? alarm clock? anything? if it's all in that one basket...impressive. i realize, too, that you may have decluttered a little extra to stage the shot. but man, sometimes i want that kind of "neatness" but there's no way i'll take down my small framed snapshot of my boyfriend and i on my bedside. where are the personal touches?
but, seriously, i really love what you did with the room. the color is beautiful---i chose a green for my bedroom, which is great and fun, but i think a dark brown or ash color will be next. the green is too bright---your room looks very soothing!
Brilliant!
great job!
would love to see the orange hallway & the bar near the kitchen.
Excellent job! Looks really good. Where's the bed from?
beautiful... your boyfriend is a lucky man!!
hah, i also thought she meant she painted tulips on the dresser but forgot about it until i read sydney's post.
now THIS is my kinda bedroom. clean, clear, simple, & gorgeous!
Hehehe, no no, tulips are in a pot! No painting the dresser.
The bed is part Ikea (HOPEN) and part old futon frame.
Personal stuff: Our books/laptops fit inside those side stands very easily, and they don't linger there long usually (get carried around, books go back into the bookcase in the living room). The basket is for small things (hand cream, watch, candles). We don't really have small stuff there.
Alarm clock really does live on the drawers as per the photograph - forces us to get out of bed to snooze or shut it off. I guess most of the "stuff" we have and like to look at is in the living room, or is on the walls.
Thank you!
What a great space that is restful without being blah...
olya, this is gorgeous. i love the asymmetry of the mural- it's fluid without being too girly- looks fantastic. way to go!
Wow, what a difference! The only suggestion I'd make is to keep your eye out for a cozier rug, maybe a Flokati--I think you might like a deeper pile to help offset the coldness of the tile floor.
So great to see people use what's around them to make things beautiful, esp. for a gift for those they love.
Beautiful job on the room. You have an excellent eye for color.
Your design friend deserves high praise. The simple yet lovely abstract/organic flower on the wall is the perfect focal point and adds so so much.
That's really gorgeous! I have a similar bedroom that I'm doing in my house which has a lot of white in it and I was going to a single wall in some kind of wallpaper to make it less harsh and blokish but I reckon what you've done there is great - it softens the room a lot and gives it a really nice central focus!
thanks again, to everyone!
a warmer rug is in the (very) long term plans, after the 100 other things that should be replaced (i.e., milk crates under the TV!). i appreciate the reminder for how much cozier it'd make that room, though! thank you!