A Room To Call My Own

Another major milestone is complete! My room is done. No, I don't mean my/our bedroom. I mean my room. I'm entitled to my very own room, right?? Well maybe not, but my awesome hubby lets me get away with it. This is my place to write, my place to read, my place to sit and go through the mail with Twilight on the TV while he watches the news and other far more sophisticated programming elsewhere. This is my place to be me and do me things. This room, as it turns out, is also my favorite.  

Oddly enough, this now favorite room of mine started off as the worst in the apartment. But for those of you who know me, you know I enjoy a good challenge! This is how it all began, in June...

"My" room in June, when we first saw the apartment

Right from the beginning, it was not a pretty sight.  But it got even worse when we closed in September.  We had a bookcase torn out, and had an interesting brown patch of wall waiting behind it. We also finally got to see what was hiding under the rug! The radiator cover was missing a panel, and apparently an entire leg, as one side was at least two inches higher than the other.  It was beyond a mess, it was terrifying. I think this room alone was enough to scare my hubby out of the sale. 

My room when we closed in September...

But not me! I knew this room was going to be beautiful. You see, I get visions. I'm not talking the psychic, see the future kind of visions. I get decorating visions. I can look at the above room, for example, and instantly see in my mind exactly what I am going to make it look like. My visions are the only thing that sold my husband on this apartment. He thought it was horrible, and couldn't see it any other way. But, he trusts me. And he trusts my visions.

And now today, just two months after the above picture, this room has been transformed into my very own happy place. The very same corner of the room that you see above now looks like this!

My room today, November 2011...

The room, officially our combination office/guest room, is colorful and fun and just feels like home. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had the floors sanded and stained in Minwax Special Walnut stain, followed by high gloss polyurethane. All the molding was painted in a bright white high gloss paint, and the ceilings and everything above the picture molding was done in a bright white ceiling paint. The beams on the ceiling look so beautiful, and really stand out in the bright white. The walls are Shore by Restoration Hardware. I had previously used this color in Connecticut in my dining room and half bathroom. My inspiration for this room, however, was Carrie Bradshaw's remodel in Sex and the City, the movie. As for the radiator covers, although the parts are apparently very old and valuable, and although I did just find the missing panel the other day on the floor of my closet, we decided that it just looked better without it. Although the radiator itself was in pretty sorry shape, our painters did a beautiful job restoring it.

As for the decor, the room is a combination of several other rooms from my past. The white desk is from Crate and Barrel, and was originally bought for my bedroom in Hartford. The black ladders from Pottery Barn originally sat on either side of my living room couch. The black chairs are a part of my Pottery Barn dining room set, and are probably just temporary until I find something more permanent. The day bed was from my guest room in Hartford, and came from Pier One Imports. The black and white rug, from Overstock.com, was bought for our living room in our last New York apartment. The Diane Von Furstenberg duvet cover is the only new item in the whole room, besides the still wrinkled, fresh from the package curtains we just hung from Bed Bath and Beyond. 

I couldn't be more excited about my new room, not just because I love it and it feels so cozy, but because this is exactly the vision I had when I looked at this sad little room for the first time less than five months ago. It feels so great to turn that vision into a reality! 

Here is another before and after shot...

Before, what you first saw when you looked in the room...

And after, your first view of the room!

And finally, just a few more "after" shots...

My guest bed/personal lounge couch!

The beautiful ceiling...

A nice "after" shot...

There is still some work to be done... I have to decorate the walls, for one thing. (One very empty wall is conspicuously absent from the pictures.) But it's so close to completion that I decided it was worthy of being called an "after." Also, a special thanks goes out to my hubby, of course, for mounting our TV on the wall (and for giving up this TV, which used to be in our bedroom!), for hanging the curtains, and for understanding that I'm the kind of girl who needs to have a place to call her very own!

Tiny Room, Big Accomplishment. (Not Really. But at Least it's a Start!)

Hello friends, readers, and people who ended up here quite by accident! Now that my new hubby and I are done saying our "I do"s and honeymooning in Hawaii, we are back in New York and getting back down to business! Tonight we finished making one whole room in our apartment livable.  It was, of course, the smallest room... the bathroom. It might not look like much, but it was a nice little accomplishment for two people who have been living in utter chaos for six weeks. For starters, our bath towels will no longer end up on the floor, and we finally have a place to hang our toilet paper roll! And best of all, we got rid of the ribbed wallpaper on the ceiling. That's right, I said ceiling!





My textured wallpapered bathroom ceiling. The picture doesn't do it justice!

Ok so maybe the wallpaper wasn't technically ribbed. But close enough. It definitely had a texture to it, and it definitely reminded me of a condom ad. Needless to say, it had to go. So we started our project by saying goodbye to our bumpy brown wall/ceiling paper and never looked back. The results, at first, were not pretty. But after our painter was done tearing down the paper, and repairing the old plaster walls underneath (this tiny room was a tad expensive in that regard), he painted the walls with Restoration Hardware's Gravel in a low gloss finish. He also painted the ceiling a glossy white. The result? A greatly improved bathroom without actually doing any true renovations! Here are a few before and after shots...

 


Before...

After...



And a few more....

  

Before...























After the wallpaper, before the paint...

  


After...

















And a few more still....


Before...



After...

 We used some wedding gift cards to fill the room with Lacoste towels and floor mats from the Crocod'il Collection in Nile and True Navy. (Based on the name of the collection, I have only now just realized that my friends are not, in fact, 'gators!) We added a simple white window shade from Bed Bath and Beyond and a few towel bars and a toilet paper holder from Home Depot's Palladium collection. (Oh what fun we had, both crammed in that tiny room all night, anchoring screws and leveling towel bars!) And did you notice the big lily pads from Crate and Barrel? My husband loves our shower, which he calls "the Fishbowl." Always one step ahead of him, I strategically decorated with three large faux-lily pads, which conveniently double as Fishbowl-Blockers!

This bathroom is certainly nothing special, and I hope to do much more with it (i.e. rip it all out and start from scratch) down the road. But for now, we have a cozy little bathroom filled with lots of Crocod'illy friends and the occasional nice bright color accent to liven things up!