Our bedroom was a dreary place.  It was hopeless.  Short of knocking out the wall and adding extra windows, I was lost on how to breathe life into the space.  I allowed things to pile up around me in a clutter that didn’t have any business in a marriage retreat. The room was already gross….I didn’t see the need to protect it. It became the dumping ground for the whole house.

I was wrong.  Clutter is the enemy of peace. Even removing the pictures on the walls and the large bed frame allowed me to see the potential in the space much clearer.

Without spending a dime, it was easy to rip up the old carpet, pop up the tack strip and pull the staples.

Fresh paint on the walls and trim, plus paint on the floor, made a clean slate for even better things. White trim made the room feel fresh.

Having to use what we already had, was a lovely limitation.  If I had the budget to buy anything I wanted, it would have been very hard to make a decision.  Instead, I spruced up our old furniture with a little paint.

That same limitation gave us our gold lamps.

Before I spent any money, I put all the things I was thinking about together in a power point collage, just to make sure it would look ok together.

 Our old ceiling fan could only take a 25 watt bulb, so we switched it out for a standard fixture with a little personality.

Layering in furniture and texture with the jute rug and curtains, cozied up the space and started to make it feel finished.

More texture comes from the faux bamboo blinds (They are $1.50 placemats and a $6 runner from Ikea thumbtacked over the windows.) and  faux sheep rugs ($12 Ikea rugs that I whipped stitched together) by the beds.  They collect dirt like I was afraid of, but clean up nicely with a toss through the dryer.

The gold tones and wood tones, plus the natural color of the placemats and jute rug add warmth and keep the mostly white space from being too sterile.

Pillows add softness while the variation in shape make it visually interesting.  The long pillow is from Ikea and the square pillow forms are from pillow cubes.  I prefer to use feather pillows because they NEVER lose their fluff.  Feather pillows are the only pillows I’ve found that can be tossed and fluffed back to perfection every time.

The peacock pillow cover is from Amazon and I’m waiting on the rest of my order to come to finish up the pillows on the couch and the bed. The white pillow on the sofa is still naked :).

The wood picture frame and carved wooden turtle (a gift from our friend in Hawaii) plus the plant, add warmth and life to the corner.  Plus mirrors on every surface we could manage them bounce the limited light around and really brighten things up.

The white shams on the bed are filled with King feather pillows also from Pillow Cubes. Look at the difference between non-feather and feather pillows. I have a tutorial on sewing easy pillow covers here and plan to use it for the pillows that will end up on the bed. (The photo below also shows the difference between no dust ruffle and the no sew dust ruffle.)

I pulled way back to show you this final picture to try to capture the piece of plywood on the floor and the white curtains on the wall.  Under the plywood is a large hole where a sunken bathtub used to be, and behind the curtains (sheets thumbtacked to the ceiling) are studs, pipes, wires and insulation.  I can’t fix those two things right now. That lovely limitation almost prevented me from trying to change the room at all. The truth is I hardly notice them now.

I couldn’t make this room perfect, but my imperfect efforts still blessed my family.

 Pillow cubes provided the feather pillows for this post. All opinions are my own.