Construction Zone

For as long as they've been old enough to form their own opinion about design elements, our kids have hated our master bedroom. Oh, they liked the bedroom itself well-enough, but the color? The "decor"? Blech. Gag. And when they discovered that Paula and Ben agreed with them, all the better. Randy and I have never really understood what they object to. I mean, EVERYBODY has a four-foot by three-foot Coca-Cola Santa advertisement on one of their bedroom walls, right?!? Maybe not. But it works for us. And we are the ones who sleep there. Besides Sammie, but she hasn't expressed an opinion one way or the other. Since we redid the bathroom - which EVERYBODY agrees is wonderful - they've been all over us to redo the bedroom.

So, what the heck. We haven't had a really major home improvement project going for a while now. I painted that room when we moved in, 14 years ago, and we really haven't done anything in there since then. And the bed...let's just say that in 1983, when we bought it, it was a right stylin' waterbed. We replaced the water mattress with a real one when we moved into this house, but still.

We've decided on a style that can probably best be described as Frank Lloyd Wright Goes to Tuscany. We ordered furniture from Stacy Furniture in Allen (where the motto is "If you're not shoppin' with us...you're burnin' money!"). A whole, honest-to-goodness bedroom suite! We've never had bedroom furniture that matches! It will be delivered on February 5th, so we have a definite date to be finished with everything else.

Randy is taking all the popcorn off the ceiling in the bedroom and bathroom, and I'm cleaning up after him. He's got a couple of thoughts about a ceiling treatment, but that hasn't come together yet for him. I'm not worried. He always comes up with terrific ideas. On the bedroom walls, I'm going to do a paint treatment from Behr called "Bellagio Faux" in a kind of deep-golden color combination that blends with the bathroom, but has its own particular style. The wall behind the bed presents a unique challenge. It had grasscloth when we moved in - real grasscloth, not the vinyl fake stuff. I painted it, and always thought it looked fine. But it's gonna have to go, and it won't come down without a stinkin' messy fight. We thought about just drywalling over it, but have instead decided to put up a faux stacked stone wall. Unusual? Perhaps. But, AGAIN. It works for us. And I think it'll look just doggone awesome.

We bought several neat prints and some vintage advertising posters in Greece and Italy, and I'll frame those for the walls. Can't get away from the ads. Nope. Can't do it. It's just who we are and what we like.

With a definitive date to be done, we've got a lot of work in front of us! We've got to find somebody to haul this bed away (anybody want a vintage 1980s SOLID oak waterbed frame? It would make good firewood.), and a lot of other stuff to move, sell, and/or donate. But the end result will be well-worth it, I think. And it oughta keep the kids and Paula satisfied for a while!

Santa may not make it back into this room when it's finished, but he'll find a home here somewhere. Count on it.