Bedroom Updates

Happy Wednesday! Thanks so much for the kind words last week about the jewelry vanity I built in our bedroom as part of some small updates I’ve been making in the space.

I’ve made some other small tweaks that I figured I may as well share, though I’m not sure how interesting they are. I’m really selling this post, aren’t I? 🙂

First of all, inspired by Naomi working on making more efficient use of her hall closet, I decided to do a quick and inexpensive closet update. We have one really small closet in the bedroom that I use, and then Sam uses a similarly-small closet in in study (the next room over). And when I say “small,” I mean actually small, not like this person’s incorrect use of the word “tiny” to describe her walk-in closet:

I’m sorry to put her on blast, but when you’re pinterest-ing organization ideas for your own actually-tiny closet, it is not helpful to come across people who think that a closet with an aisle qualifies as “tiny” or that $1500 is a reasonable amount of money to spend on making over said closet. It’s okay to admit your closet is “medium-sized.” *Rant over*

Anyway, here’s the closet I’m working with:

The door frame is about 30″ wide and then there’s another ~8″ on the left and 12″ on the right, though the space on the right is deep enough that it’s hard to access things back there. I don’t have a ton of clothes so the closet does work, but it’s a little more crammed than I’d like.

Fortunately I realized that I didn’t need to do anything crazy, I just needed to raise the main bar up a little bit to make space for a second bar below so that I could hang more shirts/skirts/other short things. I didn’t want that to extend all the way across, though, because I also want to be able to hang dresses and pants that need more length, so I bought a bracket that let me end the new lower rod halfway across the closet. And pro tip: for the second rod, I used a wooden curtain rod that was on sale for $10 at Lowes, which meant it was easy to cut to length unlike the metal closet rods that are more expensive and harder to cut down because they’re metal.

Anyway, here’s how it looks now:

Here’s a closeup on the bracket situation:

I’m not going to do a tutorial because…this was not rocket science. I think you can figure out how to do this one yourselves.

Also my closet is very dark (it has no light), so I grabbed some well-reviewed motion-sensor LED lights off of Amazon (affiliate link – read our policies) for $12.99 for a four-pack. They are peel-and-stick, and I just stuck two of them on the ceiling of the closet:

So far I like them — they make getting dressed in the morning when it’s still dark out a lot easier. A few times they have come on in the night without prompting (so my bedroom is probably haunted…), so I just need to remember to keep my closet door closed each night which is tidier anyway.

The additional space in the closet means I was able to move my sweaters onto hangers rather than spread out across the door hooks and in my dresser, so that’s given me a bit more space in my dresser too. Win! Overall for $30 (rod, bracket, lights) I feel pretty good about this closet makeover!

The other bedroom updates involve the window next to the closet. You may have spotted something ugly lurking in the vanity reveal photos:

Ah yes, the tan radiator. All the radiators and baseboards in the house were this color when we moved in (I honestly can’t imagine the thought process behind picking this color), but over the years I’ve finally painted all of them but this one. The bedroom was the second room we painted when we moved in, but laziness got the better of me and I skipped the radiator. As usual, it’s the small things that then take forever to get back around to….

I guess I always thought I would paint it white, but then I realized that painting it the same color as the walls would a) help it blend in more, and b) be way easier because I wouldn’t have to worry about cutting in around the edges.

One weekend recently I finally got my act together to paint it, and it took me 30 minutes all told. First, I carefully tucked the curtains out of the way.

Then I just used a small roller to roll on two coats of the wall paint I still had (Benjamin Moore’s Black Pepper). Ah, so much better.

Then I thought about how gross the broken plastic blinds are, which I have been meaning to replace with the same blackout blinds I bought for Sam’s study two years ago but keep procrastinating on buying. So finally I went and ordered two for the bedroom (they’re from Home Depot, and there’s more product info in that post about the study). They are so quick and easy to install, tuck nicely at the top of the window when not in use, and complete block out light when we’re sleeping.

We keep the sheers closed most of the time for privacy, so we really don’t need more translucent blinds anyway. What we need is to not have streetlights lighting up the room when we’re trying to sleep.

Okay, here’s the picture of perfection.

Except with the radiator painted, it suddenly became so much more noticeable that we have awkwardly-short curtains. I made them out of a shower curtain from Target (one of my pro tips for affordable and fun window treatments), and I still really like the pattern and didn’t feel like spending money on new curtains — so I just bought a yard of dark gray fabric from Jo-Ann’s and added a border along the bottom.

Okay, now I’m done with this window.

So there you have it, a few quick projects that have improved both form and function in the bedroom. I’m sorry if that was painfully boring to read….