straight from HGTV...(jk :))

oops...in my eagerness to grab one end of the carpet on the

wall and RUN with it, i forgot to take a "before"

picture...so mom's helping me hold it up again. :) haha!

this is after i primed the brown paneling and took off the

brick to the left of the sink...but you get the idea.

When mom & dad gave me the "go-ahead" way back during

christmas break to re-decorate our guest bedroom, (which has

mostly been a storage room) i took upon myself the

scary...the daunting...the terrifying task, with as

much courage as i could muster. you see, this wasn't

your ordinary decorating project...this was...major.

although horrifying at first to see even MORE of the room's

ugly colors after the furniture had been removed, the

entire process became extremely rewarding. i say

"extremely" because...umm...pretty much ANY changes

would be an improvement! therefore, i could have been

a man, color blind, doing a minnesota vikings football theme,

and the end result would still be better. (weeell...maybe that's

an exaggeration) anyway, no, it was not my parents

who were responsible for this decorating catastrophy...it

was the 1970's builders...who, besides the cripple

of being alive and decorating a house in the 1970's era, had

the bright idea to make this room into a bar! the floor

was covered in orangish-red speckled shag. but was this

enough? no. not only did the floor flaunt the shag, but so did

the bottom half of one...WALL. yes, i said wall. you see, two

walls have a 4 inch-deep ledge on them, so under the

ledge on one wall was the carpet, and on the other wall...was yet

another sight. faux brick added even MORE colors and

textures to the already very-colorful, very-textured room.

but wait. there's more. i still haven't told you what donned

the rest of the walls! because it's the 70s! do you really think

they'd...gasp...have smooth sheet rock? of course not.

dark brown-almost black- extremely textured panelling

seemed to be the perfect choice. because it was a bar, there

is a small sink in one corner with an even brighter red

countertop, and a white backsplash with tan scribbly designs

on it. for window treatments, cream curtains with

huge orange, red, yellow, and brown flowers finished the

look. our color palette is now: reddish-orange, (a few speckles

of yellow in the carpet), dark reds and browns (bricks),

black-brown, (panelling), and bright red (counter). our textures:

shag, brick, shag, panelling, and shag. ok, so maybe i'm

having a little too much fun making fun of this room, but

i promise you...i'm not making any of it up. the first-and

definitely most fun-step was to rip out the lovely shag. although

satisfying, this did present another problem. the carpet

was GLUED to the sheet rock on the wall so...it was anything

but smooth. after scraping, scratching, and scrubbing,

only to have perfected 2 square inches, we moved on to

the faux brick. the sheet rock behind this was quite

atrocious, with gaps, and uneven edges, so we finally decided

to re-sheet rock the bottom half of the two walls. we

decided on tan for the main color, and then a rich

chocolate brown for the bottom half of the two walls that

have the ledges. by the time i got this far, it was time for

my second semester to start, so....it didn't get finished.

however, when i came home for spring break,

alas! there was carpet!! with most ot the furniture moved

back in too, it's been this way ever since,

and just a few days ago we added the finishing

touches...shimmery brown curtains...elegant victorian

lamps, and also a last minute decision of mine to paint the

brown metal strips on the ceiling (that hold up the

white squares...see "before" fig. 1, compared to "after"

fig 1 :)), so that there isn't the brown & white contrast

that give a geometric effect...haha :)

wow. what a difference!! i LOVE re-doing rooms...

lets see...what can i do NEXT?

(JUST KIDDING, mom & dad ;))