From Messy Storeroom to New Bedroom on a Budget

We would love to have a master bedroom suite opening into a private courtyard, and Bill figured out a way to make it happen without moving to another house: We would take our messy back room, which had turned into a jumble of junk when we refinished the floors in the front of the house, clear it out and fix it up, then have a wall built around the patio just outside its door. Why not?

We have been hard at work on the first phases of the project, clearing out (Bill) and painting the room and making curtains (me). First, take a look at the mess we had made by just ignoring this potentially nice room. As we had worked on other house projects, we kept shoving stuff in and just closing the door, resulting in this embarrassing jumble which we wouldn't normally show to anyone:

Doors leading to the patio.

Doors leading to the living room.

A little alcove stuffed full and some miscellaneous bookcases, ditto.

Note the white built-in bookcase to the left, if you can find it.
It will appear again in the "after" pictures below.

What's hiding behind this pile of stuff?

Why, it's a potentially nice little kiva fireplace!

 The following photo is not from our house!

Here is a photo I found on Pinterest.
I was inspired by the wall color and the long airy white curtains.
Using this photo as a reference, we picked out our paint* and found some white twin
bed sheets on sale at K-Mart.**

 We cleared and cleaned and painted and sewed.
We made a new music room/den for Bill in our old bedroom at the front of the house.
And then... we had a new bedroom!



Ready to see the results of all our hard work?

The kiva corner is a lot more welcoming! This is a wood-burning fireplace, very cozy.
I rehabbed an old lamp, painting the base and replacing the shade;
then painted the table and the picture frame.

The print is Guadalupe de la Frontera by Candace Mayer.
We bought it from Ms. Mayer at an art fair;
I love that you can always meet the artists here in Las Cruces.

This was the lamp, table, and picture frame "before"--coming from other parts of the house,
they were all the wrong shades of blue until repainted. 

The new duvet cover (also sewn from K-Mart sale sheets) is reversible to white,
but Petey doesn't suggest using that side.
New curtains cover the view to the road and the little alcove closet.
I still need to paint the white trim around the room, but I have to take some time off to rest!

I think that the built-in bookcase looks much happier now.
I have dragged around that Madonna print all my life since buying it
in Sausalito in the 1960s for $5.00

The little nicho holds a carved Saint Francis that we bought in Taos; 

he is surrounded by Red Rose Tea animals that I collected 

from boxes of tea when living in British Columbia. 

That big wooden rooster just barged in from somewhere. 

Bill calls this "Frankie and his pets."

The door to the patio has new curtains. The next part of the project (after washing the windows) will be getting an estimate on having a wall built around the patio to make an enclosed courtyard,
giving us more privacy and shutting out the sounds from the road.
There will be windows cut into the wall so we can still see our beloved mountains.

*****

I don't know about you, but I am always interested in the cost of projects. Not counting our new headboard ($200), we have spent about $145 on this project so far. 

*Paint: Behr's Premium Plus Ultra Eggshell Enamel in Gentle Sky and Semi-Gloss Enamel in Bleached Linen, @$30.00 per gallon (approximately) from Home Depot. I also used a little bit of Olympic Semi-Gloss in Planetarium (for the table and picture frame) that was left over from another project.

**The curtains were made from seven Cannon twin bed sheets from K-Mart @$5.99; the duvet cover was made from two Cannon queen size sheets @$7.99. This was the best budget-wise alternative I could find to buying more expensive sheets or fabric by the yard; the material in the sheets was quite nice with a slight sheen to it. 

The new lamp shade was $25.00.

So we went from this...

... to this...

... and from this...

... to this...

... with some elbow grease and a tiny budget, just the way I like to do things!