Making the Most of It: Sweet Victory

Once upon a time, there was a couple of crazy kids who thought it would be a great idea to DIY/on the cheap redo their master bedroom - on a Sunday. While in theory, this was a grand plan, in application, it was quite the disaster. Those kids lost many a battle that day, but they did win the war!

Let me lay today out for you - in all of its ups and downs:

1) Put old bed on Craiglist - emails start coming in within an hour - this is great!

2) First buyer never shows, but hubs and I spend over an hour taking apart and transporting old bed down to the garage (bonus: lots of stairs = no need for a workout)

3) Start to put together new bed frame. Bought via CL over six months ago, brand new in box, and IT'S BROKEN. There aren't holes where there needs to be. Hubs has to cut two pieces off and proceeds to break two drill bits before breaking down and going to Lowe's for a superman version to create new holes. THIS IS NOT GREAT.

4) New buyer is found, picks up old bed. Again - this is great!

5) Hubs gets new bed frame to work - GREAT! But we realize that we are going to need a box spring unless we want to sleep three inches off the floor. NOT GREAT. Bonus: I remember new buyer saying he now has a box spring he has no need for since our old bed frame didn't require one. And he's even nice enough to bring it back across town to us (because we sold hubs' truck we have no way to pick it up). GREAT!

6) New buyer drops off box spring - we give him his money back from the bed and call it an even swap. Everyone is happy! Until we try to put the box springs on the bed frame, only to realize that our buyer has a California King - which is even more fantastic because he now has a mattress that won't fit in our frame and we have a frame and mattress with too big of a box spring. NOT GREAT.

7) Great idea - let's just swap mattresses! It's only new buyer's third trip from completely across town. Why wouldn't he want to do that!?! Oh wait - we had to modify our original frame and cut a piece off, the piece that allowed us to expand out to a Cali King size. Now we are going to have a box spring and mattress with no frame. New buyer to the rescue again! He brings his old frame (after he had already left and went back to pick it up). SO GREAT.

8) New buyer helps us move his mattress upstairs and ours out to his truck. We are lucky and all current bedding fits the new bed, though the comforter is a little small. The mattress might end up a little hard for me, but time will tell.

We started our adventures today at 10:30am. It is now 8:30pm. And it's time for the big reveal!!!

I've been working for the last 6 months or so accumulating the things I wanted for this room redesign, so let's check out the goods already.

First, the before shot. This was from when we very first moved in to the house 3 years ago.

And the progress shot - I've added the sconces and we still have the super ugly shelves above the windows and in the corner (even though we told previous owners we didn't want them...reason forthcoming shortly).

Progress shot - we've taken down both ugly shelves only to find that the previous owners had painted AROUND them. So, I had some spackling, sanding and painting under my belt that week. I only painted over the areas that needed it and to my joy and surprise - you can't even tell! YESSSS!

Drumroll, please! Below is many months of collecting the perfect/in our budget items to pull off a new bedroom!

Not only is Lilu taking advantage of her new California King throne, but we hung curtains that match the bedspread perfectly, found two matching nightstands from, gasp, walmart.com of all places, and I absolutely LOVE the new lamps we got from Target for a whopping $17 each. We also had the art gifted to us (Thanks Aunt V!).