Let's continue... shall we?

The next stop on the tour leads to our room.  It was ugly, it was dark, and it was painted  a strange shade of purplish brown-- which when combined with blue/grey stained carpet, was... interesting.

All three upstairs bedroom are not very big-- when selecting which room would be ours we simply chose the one that felt biggest and had the nicest closet, which unfortunately is now NOT the nicest closet-- check this one out.  Trust me, I've got big plans for my closet-- one day we'll get around to it.  The room gets very little natural light which made it feel pretty dark and depressing... not exactly what I was going for.  So, as we began to renovate and redecorate the room, I tried to make selections that would help the room to feel bright, clean, and fresh.

As we did in all of the other rooms, the first step was to paint when we moved in.  This tour has already taken us on quite a journey of color-- first purple, then orange, now brown.  Wait till' you see what's next-- it will knock your socks off :)  Now, it's not that I don't like color-- I actually love it!  I just felt that painting this house in more subtle colors would allow it to feel brighter, bigger, and give it a more cohesive look from room to room.  Instead I've added accessories in bright and fun colors that can be changed and edited with the season.  I chose to paint this room a really pale, subtle, shade of blue that has grey/green undertones that make it almost feel like a warm color.  Not that you'd be able to tell from the terrible picture below...

Let me tell you... pulling carpet up in an older house is like going on an archeology dig-- you never know what you're going to discover... and sometimes it makes you love your house just a little bit less.  Once again in this room, we ripped up the carpet to discover more lino!  If we were just putting laminate into one room, it wouldn't be necessary to rip it out.  But since we were installing it throughout the main floor, we had to make sure that we had one even, level surface to work with (which led to many nights of scraping /peeling up lino and spreading a leveling agent from room to room... so much fun).

Enough of these ugly pictures!  Let's get to the fun ones!  After painting, installing new flooring, and trim, the room looks so much better...

It's a pretty small room... as you can see (there's not really even enough room for two bedside tables) but it still works!  I love how light and bright it feels with the light walls and white bedding.

Now let me tell you about some of my favorite things in this room!  First up... the one bedside table.  This was an old schoolhouse desk from my parent's house.  It was really beat up and the only drawer was missing-- so I sanded it down and stained it really dark while Doug made a new drawer for the desk that matches perfectly-- now there's an inexpensive bedside table for y'all :)

Second favorite part of the room-- the pair of lamps.  I LOVE shopping for lamps.  It could be one of my favorite stops on a trip to Home Sense.  I managed to score this pair on sale at Tarjay... (aka... Target).

And my third favorite thing-- the blue and white print blanket on my bed found in the clearance bin at the Bay.  I randomly found it one day, and as I made my way to the checkout I decided that I wouldn't buy it unless it was under 20 bucks... it was... so it got to come home with me :)  Doug hates "extras" on the bed, so it's my job to fold up the blanket and remove the throw pillows each night.  If not, they end up on the floor.

And finally... my most favorite thing in the room-- the full length mirror that Doug built for the other side of the room!  (Recognize it?  It's already made an appearance on the blog in my pregnancy photos)  When we moved into the house, this mirror (minus the trim around it) was hanging in the upstairs bathroom.  It was a bit chipped around the edges and didn't really fit the space very well.  I took it off immediately and replaced it with another one from a different bathroom in the house when we moved in.  the mirror sat in our garage for almost a year before Doug came up with the bright idea to put it in our room and frame it with some left over architrave moulding from the trim we put up around the doors in our house.  In our home Doug's in charge of the installation while I focus on the details-- filling, sanding, painting.  Doug finished his part several months ago.  My part of this project was only completed a few weeks ago :)

It looks amazing... if I do say so myself!  Great job honey!  The mirror was free (it came with the house) and Doug figures the moulding used to frame it out probably cost between 15 and 20 bucks.  So much cheaper than buying a ready made mirror from the store :)

A close up of the mirror-- please take note of my impressive paint job.  Not an easy task with a large pregnant belly in the way :)

And finally a view out the door into the baby's room.  I expect to be making the trek back and forth between the two rooms quite often in the near future.  A few weeks ago Doug made sure to put WD40 on the hinges of the upstairs bedroom doors to eliminate all potential squeaks-- we're not taking any chances around here with two sleeping kids (hopeful on the sleeping part).  How's that for being prepared!

So there you have it!  A complete tour of room number three.  I can't say it's finished yet-- I've got a few more projects up my sleeve.  Just need to find some time to execute them.  Maybe this weekend?

There are many more rooms to come on the tour of our house, but I can't promise that I'll have time to post about them anytime soon... but you never know... if they let me get to 10 days overdue I may be bored!