Friday, January 12, 2007

Frugal Friday: our bedroom

Whoops! Almost forgot it was Frugal Friday at Biblical Womanhood. I've been meaning to share photos of our bedroom since we hung the piece de resistance:

This will never be an elegant bedroom. Perhaps I earned the "Loving Wife" award for hanging my husband's prize trout, though.

Two ways to get surprising results when you decorate frugally:

Ask your husband's advice. He lives there, too, and might not appreciate being swathed in lace. (Since our bedroom window frames green pine trees, my husband suggested a rustic/elegant look--something like you'd find in an upscale, mountain B & B.)

Look outside the box for decorations. All my favorite artwork was too tall or too small for this space. Meanwhile, husband's prize-winning trout had no home. I married it with an antique bamboo net (free at yard sale) and a broken bamboo fly rod (also free). We added an old fly for detail.

This unusual arrangement works because it adds height to the bed; the natural colors blend with the green velvet headboard (a free king-size that we cut down to queen length). The white yard sale spread keeps adapting from one house's scheme to the next. Bleach is a wonderful tool!

Its original white shams didn't wear as well, so I found these Restoration Hardware replacements. They were new in the package, 75 cents per pair. Nothing makes a bed more luxurious than lots of squishy pillows! I grab old down bed pillows at yard sales, wash them in hot water, and dry them in the sun. We fold a down comforter ($5) at the foot of the bed.

Across the room is a cozy spot for reading. You might recognize the bird prints from the entry in my old house. The room is still a work in progress. I'd like to swap these thrift store lamps for a different pair, but I'm patient. Surprising things happen when you decorate with what you have on hand.

15 comments:

Laura Talbert said...

You have such visionary talent, Meredith. Your bedroom looks great!

Kim said...

Nice touches, Meredith! I'm aiming to masculinize our bedroom a bit, too. The feminine touches are less frilly than they used to be. I saw an idea for a swag in a Clotilde catalogue. I think I can create it without using their pattern. I'm going to try anyway! ;)

Jordin said...

Meredith,
I love how you've mixed the very feminine florals with all the masculine touches! I like the reading corner, too! Beautiful room!

Meredith said...

Thank you, Jordin. I didn't have florals in mind, but when I saw these new shams for 75 cents, I couldn't resist. As it turns out the yellows, blues, and greens pull in the colors of the adjacent kitchen room sofa and artwork. It was an unexpected blessing!

Mom2fur said...

I think that looks cool! A little masculine touch, a little feminine touch--that's what a room shared by two should have!

Anonymous said...

Lovely!!!! And so frugal. It certainly proves that it does not take scads of money to create a pleasing look...just a well developed eye for aesthetics.
Connie

DonnaB said...

I love it...you certainly achieved the look you were going for!

Anonymous said...

how on earth did you score Restoration Hardware shams IN THE PACKAGE for 75 cents! The headboard is a great find. Especially since you don't sew, how did you 'cut it down' while managing the curves and tailoring?

debbie

MommyLydia said...

our bedroom set is still mostly Christmas gifts. (We took back "glitzy" gifts we got and used the money to buy some very nice pillows and a soft velvety blanket to fold at the bottom -- though it does not remain folded. And the major decoration for the reception was a homemade quilt I commissioned from a friend (I paid for the materials. The work was her gift to us) that we have on the bed now. I wish I could have made that myself. If my girls are at all interested in sewing I'm going to encourage them to learn quilting.)

The dresser is an antique from my husband's side of the family -- made by someone 6 generations ago or something and it matches the sorta-twin/sorta-full size bed (custom size. Going to be a pain to replace the mattress) that is now in our guest room. The oldest boy will inherit that I guess and then we will have to figure out what to do in the bedroom.

How do you fit underwear, etc in your closet?

Anonymous said...

If you had described what you had over the bed I would have thought you were mad............but seeing the picture, it so works ! it looks like a "themed" room in a hotel or a room-set (and I mean that in a nice way !) You are so clever !

Rinty

Anonymous said...

MyBoaz'sRuth--
We use baskets or bins in the closets for undergarments, socks, pajamas. I hate to give up living space for storage! We have small closets but it works.

Have you thought about getting a memory foam mattress to replace the custom one? It is dense foam topped with memory foam, and you could buy one size larger and cut it down yourself with a serrated knife.

Anonymous said...

Debbie, I was in this hole-in-the-wall thrift store a couple of weeks ago. Nothing good there, but then I spotted these flat plastic packages with a pretty design inside. Each had the catalog tag "Restoration Hardware" and the pattern name. I bought all eight shams, thinking I would resell them. Then they matched so well...

The headboard was a Ballard Design piece my aunt was getting rid of. I take anything free, even if I think I can't use it immediately. My husband unscrewed the "legs" first. Then I removed staples from each side of the headboard and peeled back the foam, batting, and fabric on each side. He used a jig saw to trim a few inches off each side. Then all I had to do was restretch and staple the fabric over the raw edges, hot gluing the fabric covered cord when I was done.

Anonymous said...

...and voila! Thanks for the explanation, Meredith. I assumed the headboard was slipcovered. oh to live in the south where people actually PURCHASE things in the first place from RH and Ballard : ) And then feel the need to change frequently, and unload their perfectly fine things to thrift stores.

debbie

Anonymous said...

Beautiful room Meredith, what a graceful combination of masculine and feminine. Ours is rather similar. When we moved to this new house, I hung the two prints of trout purchased by my husband on our honeymoon (not frugal then but somewhat "frugalized" now in that we painted the dated oak frames black to update them) over our bed and "then" added the flowered coverlet and the decorative-only, thus girly in my husband's eyes, swag to the adjacent window. I was surprised to see how easily the prints fit in to my pale green and wisteria purple color scheme, but actually their scales are many colors.

Anonymous said...

Trout ARE beautiful, Alison! They have those pretty green and pinks that go with anything wild or natural like fern prints, etc.

We should be thanking our lucky stars that we don't have large mouth bass over our beds, right?