Bedroom Furniture! Woo !

So as I hinted in my last post, we finally picked up some bedroom furniture. Although Chris has been committed to not filling the house with crappy cheap looking furniture, he did finally decide that a certain line at Ikea was worth it. He also compromised to white furniture. He was all about a dark, cherry wood look, but I warned him it would take the edge off the bold wall color. We picked up two nightstands and two dressers. Here is the short wide dresser that we placed between my closet and the bathroom. It fit perfectly. 

It is a huge improvement over the nothing that was there, both aesthetically  but more importantly functionally. Hell, I finally unpacked two more boxes. But one dresser isn't close to enough space for the two of us. So here is the first dresser's taller, skinnier brother (yes, the dressers are male - it has been decided). 

And lastly we got two matching nightstands for either side of the bed (we had the matching lamps through a lighting set we picked up on sale at the home depot):

I love the monochrome thing we have going on in the bedroom - it looks awesome and makes it really easy to pick out things I think will match, lol. We also picked up much-needed new blinds in a matching white:

Still need to pick out some window dressings, but this was a huge step for us. No regrets on the furniture - it was perfect, and on budget. Feeling so much more like a grown up - can almost overlook that it will be more than half a decade before I get my next 'real' job. 

Ikea Upgrade: Mirrored Headboard

So as many of you know, Chris and I have been really slow about buying bedroom furniture (and honestly, furniture in general). I have just been really stubborn about only getting things we really love. I have passed by many an alright coffee table certain that the perfect one will cross my path in the future. One of the areas of greatest contention had been the bed. I don't know if you remember, but when we first moved in, we almost bought a bedroom set from Bob's (read about it here), but I wasn't in love with it...so we didn't. 

(Picture Credit: mybobs.com)

After the mattress was delivered  I decided that I didn't want a framed bed, but rather just a headboard hung on the wall. I thought this would prevent the very large bed from looking too large for the room (I am simply demonstrating how large the bed really is):

Also, that picture does a good job of showing the empty wall behind the bed (yea, focus on the wall). I had the crazy idea of making the headboard out of square thick black picture frames, with a variety of black and white photos in them. A play off the bedspread and to add a bit more of us into the room. But, on our trip to Ikea to pick up the furniture that we liked (finally - but you will have to wait until the next post). I got the inspiration for a mirrored headboard. After a quick call to Jenna to test the ridiculousness of this idea, we picked up the mirrors. Chris was happy because, although this was a lot of work, it was less work than the picture frame idea I had before. And tah-dah (also a little peak at the new bedside tables & dressers):

It is very difficult to take a photo of a mirror without the flash washing it out, but here is another try:

The mirrors help to make the room brighter and are a perfect contrast to the dark blue of the walls. Overall, I am really happy with how it turned out. It is different, unique, but also clean and modern. 

Ikea Upgrade: Bookcases

A couple of weekends ago, Chris and I went to Ikea to buy bookshelves, because as it turns out 99.9% of my material possessions are books (the other 0.1% is dog toys). This is just a small taste of the number of boxes of books that we moved:

Needless to say, I couldn't get away with not having bookshelves. I picked up two 50$ BILLY bookcases from Ikea in white:

These bookshelves are perfect in that they are large, cheap, and have clean lines. That being said, they are a little boring and do scream IKEA!! Since I am trying to trick my friends and family into thinking I am an adult, I wanted to make these look like more than 50 dollar bookcases. I found a beautiful idea on Pinterest, where a woman stenciled the back of her bookcases to add color and pattern. It looked amazing, but then I remembered that stenciling is  a lot of work and I'm not yet trained in the art of not-making-a-huge-mess-with-paint. So I decided on my own little twist: Fabric!

Isn't it perfect? I was smitten. A special thanks to the lady at Jo-ann's who was nice enough to explain that each baton doesn't have the same width and then wait while I worked out the math. So after I got my fabric home and started to build my bookcases I needed to line the back of the bookcases, which without fabric look something like this:

So i laid out the fabric to make sure it would fit. All that extra time thinking at Jo-ann's paid off, because it fit:

Then I flipped it over and taped it into position:

I used Chris' fancy Gorilla Tape and to be honest, I don't think I could get that fabric off even if I tried. After I doctored up the back of the bookcase, I built it as per the instructions to get this:

I'm in love! Here is a close up:

I rinsed, washed, and repeated to have two matching bookcases. I think they look much better than the cheap bookcases they were before. All in all, this project wasn't that intense or expensive and I would totally do it again. Now I just have to get around to putting all those books away...