Making Our House a Home

It has been about three months since we've moved from DC to our new home. When we first moved in we marveled at the space, three bedrooms, with an actual dining room AND kitchen that were two separate rooms, it was like I died and went to real estate heaven. As far as style goes I gravitate toward soft colors, romantic ambiance and more vintage with a splash of french country kitchen- quite a style huh? I just really enjoy finding pieces to bring a room together that you wouldn't normally expect. See what your decor style is with this quiz on Ethan Allen!  

 As soon as we moved in I had all these grand ideas to decorate each room and what I thought would look great. Certainly no shortage of ideas, however trying to make all of that work after just moving and try to get settled was tough. Luckily we have awesome friends and family who donated things they were looking to get rid of. It was super generous of everyone and we are so grateful!

 We ended up furnishing our entire spare bedroom with things we were given (a huge thank you to our family!!) A few of the pieces we did a little "updating" to. This is the before photo of the dresser. I really liked the raised parts to it and saw this as a great opportunity to paint it a contrasting color. Off to Home Depot I went (which is pet friendly FYI!) I poured over different color palettes and decided to go with a navy and white. My thought was it is a great color scheme for an adult bedroom, but could also transition to a room for a little one someday! Also navy & white is such a classic combination that you can incorporate lots of pops of color to add another dimension to the room. 





Here is the finished product! I will start by saying after 2 days of sanding and painting this piece I decided I did not like the color. So back to sanding I went this time with a little help from my husband :) When I went back to Home Depot they were awesome, they changed the color for me free of charge! They did mention that if you go with the "high gloss" finish it has a tendency to change the color- something to note for future DIY projects! In my case it was pretty drastic- the color was definitely more of a cobalt than navy. 

 Here is a detail shot of how it turned out. Personally I love the higher gloss finish, I know that isn't for everyone but it is definitely an option to skip just go with a matte finish.





Here is my bigger project of the room, a tufted headboard! I got a lot of the inspiration for things I saw on Pinterest that I loved, but wasn't willing to spend hundreds on. If anyone is interested in the tutorial of how I did the headboard feel free to email me for details. I used the headboard that came with this bedroom set thanks to my Aunt! :) I didn't take a before shot- sorry about that. However it was the same color as the dresser, and fits a full sized bed. 


I did a lot of research about the different ways to do a DIY headboard, most of which use plywood and hang on the wall versus being on the actual frame. I actually think this might have been a little easier as the headboard was already really sturdy so I just added a three inch foam from Home Depot and premeasured all of the places I wanted the tufts to appear, make sure to space them out evenly otherwise they won't appear correctly on the headboard, then added the foam and did the tufts.
Getting the tension even on all the tufts wasn't very
easy but I did the best I could. I also hand covered all
the buttons with matching fabric. I can definitely see
myself redoing this sometime in the future hopefully
to get better tension on the tufts. Overall I was happy
with the results, and was very appreciative of all the
help I got from Oliver! I owe that guy :)