My almost-sorta-kinda-but-not-quite-done-yet bedroom.

Now, this is no home design blog. I assure you of that. However, we’ve been working on decorating our bedroom for several months now, and now that it’s maybe 85% complete I’m dying to show it off a bit. I still need to nail down what I want to hang on the walls, (and maybe take that mirror out of its box eventually, its seriously been leaning there for like 6 months like that) and finish painting. Because no, the part of the wall that’s still tan was not an artistic choice but more of a “It’s 2am and I’m nearly done but I really don’t feel like moving the bed right now I’ll just do it later” type of decision and now it’s like 2 months later buuuuut anywho. I’ll do it later.

I love our room. It feels like a fancy hotel. (Well, okay. Maybe no so much fancy as a charming hotel full of Ikea and Craigsist/Kijiji furniture.)

But the pièce de résistance is truly the dresser. We used to have (well, still have, it just has a new home inside the closet now) a junky piece-o-crap that I picked up at goodwill with the intention of painting or something. That was like 5 years ago and its ugly ass was still sitting in my bedroom, all peeling veneer and drawers that don’t quite line up. So off I went to Kijiji, to find a new dresser. (Side note for my American readers- Kijiji is basically Canada’s Craigslist. They have Craigslist, too, but here in Edmonton at least its sketch factor is way higher so mostly everybody uses Kijiji). Found one that I liked, nothing fancy, just an Ikea Hemnes. But it was made (mostly) of solid wood, and looked in fairly good shape, so I figured hey, it would be pretty easy to stain that a nice dark brown and then we could save like $200 instead of buying a brand new one.

Well.

It was way more work that I had originally thought. What I thought was unfinished pine was actually unstained pine with a nice thick layer of sealer on it that proved to be damn near impossible to remove. And then after weeks of sanding and stripping, there were several layers of wood conditioner that had to be applied, and two coats of stain, and a coat or two of poly, and of course several of the rails had to be replaced. (I bought it used, and it had an as-is “used for display” sticker on the back, so the thing had seen some wear.) Luckily, I had my best guy on it. Nate has been working on this thing all summer, and it came out beautiful. I would have given up and said “screw it, let’s just paint it!” long ago.

I’m glad I stayed out of it.

And, last time we were at Ikea we had a look at the Hemnes they had in the store, and it looks like this particular dresser is no longer made of solid pine, but of a particle board coated in an acrylic veneer. So yeah. Very happy.

And what’s a room reveal without a before and after?

Now its time to go trash the room completely because there are mountains of laundry to be done and you know it always ends up here…