We Have a Bedroom, at Last!

We have been busy. We spend most of that busy time working on the bedroom.

Here's what it looked like when we first moved in.

After ripping the carpet, replacing it with laminate, painting the walls and filling it with some furniture, it now looks like this.

We love love love the floor and the wall color. Just the paint and the flooring alone changed the room so much. It now feels more like it's ours.

Ever since he was a child, Vee has always wanted a black bedroom. But came painting time, his family vetoed his black bedroom proposal. I couldn't bring myself to agree to a black bedroom at first, but several awesome pictures were all it took to convince me. I mean, look at these and tell me they're not breathtakingly chic.

Jenna Lyons' home as featured on Canadian House and Home website.

A living room from March/April 2011 issue of Lonny Magazine.

I couldn't agree to stark black, but we reached a happy agreement with dark gray (Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal). It does make the room seem smaller, but it feels really cozy now and isn't that how a bedroom should be?

When painting, we removed some fittings and found that the room was once yellow before it was painted pale blue.

I love finding things like this. I can only imagine the next owner painting the room years from now and discovering dark gray paint underneath and wondering whether the previous painters (that would be us) were mad.

We also replaced the cheap-looking, yellowing plastic shutters with bamboo Roman blinds (Serenity Privacy Roman Blinds by Frontier Blinds). We scored the blinds at a 60 percent discount at the local Rona store, so it was only a little over $30.

Our building management only allows white and cream window treatments to make the windows all look uniform from the outside. We couldn't find any white blinds we like, and then I saw that Thrifty Decor Chick had successfully spray-painted some bamboo blinds. So we decided to spray-paint the bamboo blinds white, but that didn't go exactly according to plan.

First, we couldn't get even coverage, so we had to go back to the store to get a spray-paint gun. By the way, that thing is the shiz; it's a must-have for spray painting. Get it and your fingers will thank you for not subjecting them to the torture that is holding a spray-paint can nozzle for longer than one minute. The gun really helped me get an even coverage. The trick is to apply a steady pressure on the trigger, putting on two to three thin coats and working in sections. But even after going through the second can, I had only finished painting one side of the blinds.

Uneven paint coverage, BSPG (before spray-paint gun).

The good thing is that the bamboo was tightly woven and the white paint didn't get on the other side at all. So with one side already painted white, we decided to leave the other side bare. It was easier that way, and we also figured the natural bamboo color would look good in the bedroom.

Looks perfectly white from outside!

And the tight weave has another perk: it provides excellent light block.

We can wake up as late as we want!

With proper flooring and window covering, the bedroom is now functional. Everything we've done so far has turned out great and we love it maybe a little too much.