The Dream Bedroom: Wishlist

So while other parts of our new house might be finished (…and when I say finished, I mean, they will be…in 5 years time or so), the bedroom is one place that’s still a work in progress. The work actually started before we even reached this house actually. In our previous two houses, we’d had a fairly cheap IKEA bed (think it was this one), and when we found out we’d secured our new house, we actually very quickly bought a new bed – a king size wooden slatted one that was really cheap on Groupon but really good quality and sturdy. In our old houses, we’d gone for white/cream shabby chic style furniture, but decided for the new house that we wanted more real wood in the bedroom and less shabby chic. Unfortunately our bedside tables are still mismatched to the bed, and we currently have my dressing table from my parents’ house squeezed into the bedroom too – that’ll be moving into our small bedroom once we’ve got a chest of drawers to keep my clothes in…currently those are in boxes still in the small bedroom (yep, living out of boxes still!).
So I decided to do a bit of a bedroom wishlist – some of things we’ve got on the way, some we’ve already bought, and some are just wishes and dreams…one day!

 

You have no idea how excited I am for this! We have this bookcase on the way (along with a new dining table and chairs since our old one wasn’t right for our dining room, and a nest of tables) – we bought them from Wren Living during a sale and they’re being delivered in a couple of weeks. One of my gripes in the past 2 houses we’ve lived in is that I haven’t had anywhere to put my books. If you know me, you’ll know that I have lot of books, so this is an issue. The vast majority of them are still at my parents’ house, but I have a couple of cardboard boxes filled with them here that I’d love to get out. Realistically, I’m barely going to get any of them onto this bookcase, but at least it’s a start! This will  be going in place of the dressing table once we’ve got it moved.

Before moving into a house that had no curtains, I never realised how difficult they were to choose! Our last house was the first one we needed curtains for, and we only bought a cheap IKEA pair for the bedroom plus a short and long matching set for the living room window and patio doors. Our new house needs a lot more curtains than that – our bedroom alone has two windows! Ideally we wanted something warm and cozy looking like the above – we actually ended up with some similar to these but from Next for our living room bay window – but because we had a few different colours and styles of duvet already, none of which would match something like this, we had to go a bit more plain. In the end we found a light coloured chevron pair at Tesco, but my ideal ones would still be check or tartan! As I said though, curtains are difficult! I now know I dislike pencil pleats ones thanks to the hassle of them, but we couldn’t fit a curtain pole in our bay window (despite all my attempts) so had to settle for a rail with pencil pleats. Fortunately we can fit rails above the bedroom windows, so purchased a couple of cheap rails for the eyelet curtains there. I’m also tempted by some of the blackout curtains at Yorkshire Linen too – we’ve got a streetlight fairly close outside our window, and even though we have blinds already installed behind the curtains in the bedroom, the light does seem to creep around the edges a bit. They actually some in interesting colours and prints as opposed to, you know, the black, grey or white that blackout curtains seem to be, so that makes a nice change!

When purchasing house products on our budget and with a slightly tighter timescale (ie. if you actually want to unpack your boxes!), you’ll find Dunelm to be your best friend. We’ve spent far too much time and money there recently (although the original living room curtains and poles got returned there and our Next ones were actually cheaper!). As I said, we need new bedside tables as we have some cheap ones that have survived 3 moves with us already (came all the way from Newcastle!), and one has been “shabby chic-ed”, so we have a white one on Ben’s side and a wooden one on mine. Yep, we need matching ones sometime!

Slightly boring, but oh so necessary – lamp shades! We lived the first few weeks in the new house with only a single lampshade throughout (we’d only had to buy one for the old house), and it turns out that no matter how much else you put in a room, it won’t look finished until you’ve got a lampshade over that bare bulb! We found these ones at Argos really cheap and bought a selection of various (basic) colours. We’ve got Mocha in the bedroom to tie in with the curtains.

So, this is the one thing I’ve decided I need in our house (aside from, you know, all the necessities and sewing room bits and pieces..) – tree wallpaper for the bedroom. How awesome is it?! And how much would you feel like you’re waking up in a fairytale forest every day?! It’s also not too over the top and obvious – I’ve picked up a sample in store, and it’s actually very understated. We’re not big fans of wallpaper in general, but I think I might be able to win Ben over with this one eventually. He’s still being stubborn, but hopefully once we’ve got all the furniture in place, I’ll finally get it!

We’ve got a small ensuite with our bedroom. I love this – it means I’m in no danger of falling down the stairs during one of my many nightly trips to the bathroom! The shower in there though is a bit cramped and wasn’t well kept by the previous owners (bit rusty and damp in places), so I’d love a big shower enclosure like we had in the old house. Whether this would fit or not is another matter…So far all we’ve done in that bathroom is add a small basket for storage plus a little corner mirrored cabinet since it had no mirror or storage whatsoever. Oh, and we bought a toilet brush. Grown up priorities, y’all.