master bedroom step 1: paint

Finally!

We've been on a strict budget around here lately, so I've had to put off starting my master bedroom makeover... until now! We finally have the money - and time - to get things started. I knew from the beginning we were going to paint the walls... when we first moved in, everything in the place was original. I understand no one replacing the carpet, but our home was built in1985! We bought it in 2005... how can it have gone 20 years without even one wall being painted!? I'm sorry, but that's crazy. Well in the beginning we were so anxious to get rid of the sterile feeling that we pretty much painted everything! Our master bedroom is fairly large and has vaulted ceilings, so we were ok with a little bit darker color. We went with Behr brand Brown Teepee #700D-4:

I actually really love the color - we also used it in the master bath (and I think we are going to keep it in that room), but it's dark enough that it made our room feel smaller. That was ok with us - at the time - but when I got pregnant with little Matthew, we had to turn our office into his nursery. And where did our office go? It got smushed in to the corner of our bedroom. Ever since then... our bedroom feels like a cave! It's cramped and small... not to mention it's the only room I never really got around to decorating in any way, so it's boring too.

I wanted to go with something on the gray side, and I settled with Gull from the new Martha Stewart line of paint. Note: the swatch provided online is not very accurate, it seems to have a lot more brown in it than the real thing.

We are about half way done painting, and I can't believe the difference! Our room feels big... and open... and bright! When I say we are half way done... that's mostly because we have vaulted ceilings and I realized we had lent our extension pole for the paint roller to someone. So currently there's a definite line around our room at about the 9 foot mark (as high as I could reach while on a chair) where the new paint stops. But I have the pole back! Which means this weekend hopefully the job will be finished. I so can't wait to have that finished and to move on to other things. My next step is to make new curtains, and to condense our "office" area of the room so that it takes up as little room as humanly possible. Pictures soon!