Final Touches - Bedroom DIY iii

Part three of my bedroom decorating and styling continues with a look at changes to the window area and some finishing touches. After a few days now I am still trying the furniture in different places and swapping things from other rooms too.

folding shutters from Jali, duvet cover from Soak and Sleep

Window treatment.

My ceiling isn't flat all over, it becomes lower as it sits into the eaves of the roof and around the window. This is quite sweet but very annoying if you want to fit traditional shutters. I seriously love old French shutters, but not only is it pretty hard to find the right size but the roof tilt made it totally prohibitive. The solution was folding ones from Jali which can be made to order. They are pretty simple and could easily be made yourself if you are good with carpentry. I removed the tiled window ledge and replaced it with an old piece of leftover wooden flooring. The window appears larger now and the fretwork means you can have the shutters closed on a bright sunny day but still let in enough light to realise it's daytime.

Under the window is a radiator. I tend to cover mine with a cabinet as it looks neater and acts as a shelf. As I was moving the bed up against it I didn't want any weird gaps so I bought a radiator cover which stretched past the radiator and up to the wall. It wasn't the most attractive of covers and so we changed the top for a piece of reclaimed scaffolding plank. I then toned down the new white mdf with a mixture of chalk paints to make it blend.

It's good to mix different shaped pieces of furniture when you can so that they don't look like a row of boxes. A curve on the leg or front can make all the difference. The kidney shaped bedside cabinet from One World Trading has a great organic shape and is almost identical in colour to French Linen (colour) with some detailing of decoupaged birds on the front drawers. I love the shape and so changed my square cupboard for this. To keep the colour flowing I added a similar tone to the central panels of the door to my walk-in wardrobe which also got treated to a set of hooks.

I'm trying to see how furniture looks when not pushed flat against the wall, trying some angles across corners and such. The curves of the kidney shape works very well in this respect.

I even gave my statues a coat of chalk paint, lamp from One World Trading

Collections never stop growing, I'm starting to collect collections now!! The second piece from One World Trading is a white glass fronted wall cupboard, small and neat enough not to be intrusive but handy to group together 'collections' of candles, bottles and books. It has a cute wallpaper at the back giving it a vintage Victorian vibe and is lightly distressed which again fits with the pieces that I'd been working on.

I painted a couple of old bedside cabinets and by placing them under the cupboard tried out a few different looks for it, some standing the cupboard on top and some hanging it on the wall above. When stood on a base it becomes a mini dresser shape and really suits a bedroom, although its handy size would go anywhere in the house.

So next job was to replace the bed headboard. Initially I was going to use an Indian carved screen and rested it in place for a few weeks to see if I liked it. My plans changed though when I saw some old shutters at an antique centre. They had been left outside and the paint was peeling but I loved the way the shutters were made, the iron work on them and even the colour they had previously been painted. They couldn't possibly go against my bed without a clean and quite a bit of the flaky paint was scraped off (for fear it would end up in my hair or something). I may paint them but for now I'm going to live with them and then decide.

Sometimes we have to think unconventionally to have a real break through. The door between my bedroom and the hall/landing opened in such a way that it took up space and prevented me from having any other furniture in that area. It then occurred to me that actually, I never close the door so why not remove it altogether and for a bit of privacy, hang a door curtain. Eureka, the curtains which never worked on the window now look perfect as a door covering. By extending the curtain pole beyond the door frame I can also push them out of the way completely, and if I need something less transparent than the lace, hang one of my beautiful monogrammed French linen sheets (recently purchased at the Lincoln Antiques Fair).

The finishing touches to the room are a lamp and a cool set of hooks (also from One World). The lamp is not a bedside light particularly but more a soft room light so I placed it on a low wooden box over the other side of the room. The base is the perfect combination of colour and distressing with a neutral pale linen shade and it's rather sophisticated look adds a touch of class.

I couldn't resist the set of three hooks either, my love for deer antlers winning me over for these, and as I had removed the bedroom door from the other side of the room they can provide a place to hang my long necklaces and Japanese kimono. I'm still playing with different effects too, I tried out some fairy lights for a while...

These giant pillowcases are quite common in France, it's not all that easy to get the padding here in the UK so I just put two thin standard pillows in each one. Gaelle from Gz Bb Antiques has dyed these to art deco covers in lovely pale blue grey.

For more looks in this vein, using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and furniture from One World Trading, check out my Pinterest boards.

I hope soon to be adding a shop to this blog and you should be able to buy similar pieces to mine with one click. The company who provide the platform are just ironing out some glitches, I'm keeping my fingers crossed to get this up and running as soon as possible.

I'm still tweaking the paint too, but that's the beauty of Chalk Paint, keep an eye out on Instagram.

This blog has been copied by someone in Indonesia and they are using the Blogger platform, as yet Google, Blogger etc have done nothing about it. Just in case this post also gets copied ... hey you .. it's copyright to me Janice Issitt, all photos and words, and I am reporting any violations to the copyright agency.

See you all soon ... Janice