You see what I have to work with?!

In other words, what little crafty time I've had lately has been dedicated to trying to get this bedroom makeover going. I need to try to get as moved as possible into this room by Christmas Eve, since we have family coming to stay and need one of the rooms for them to sleep in. These admittedly aren't the best "before" pics, since my brother still had a bunch of stuff in here at the time and my dad went ahead and patched up some of the holes in the walls before I could get to the picture. But this should give you an idea of what I'm working with in terms of color... I call this "dungeon grey".
And let's not forget the black window shades (that never get opened), and the dark blue ceiling...

Oh yeah, and the completely busted closet doors, which are now gone, and not coming back. I'm going to put curtains there instead. (Oh, and the cat...she thinks it's HER room now!)

Spent Monday night priming the entire room, with some much-needed help from my dad. I'm very much lacking in skills on paint-rolling ceilings. As you can see, the primer is a drastic improvement in color! (And it's amazing how much brighter the room seems already!)

So here's my plan: I'm going to paint the ceiling and closet on Sunday--those are going to be tan. Next Saturday, two of my friends are coming over to help me paint the walls. (I didn't ask, they volunteered. I have wonderful friends.) Those will be green, somewhere between this slightly too-light green and this too-dark green. The blue carpet will stay. The idea was that I was trying to match this fabric. (And, at least on my computer, the greens look a lot less olive and the blue carpet isnt' quite as dark, so hopefully it'll work!) I will have to paint the trim on the windows and closet and all, because the one window had to be repaired and the baseboards had light blue paint on them from the original paint job from when my brother was a kid. So those are going to be a chocolatey brown to try and look like the actual wood color. On the plus side, that saves me a LOT of time on taping this stuff up!

I have to admit, this project has been stressing me out, since trying to work 3 jobs and find time to do major room redecorating has been rather difficult! But I found out today that hours are being cut at my garden center job for November, due to low customer traffic and needing to save some money. So what this means is that for the next couple of weeks, I'm temporarily laid off--no need of a cashier being there all day if there's hardly any customers. But I'm actually ok with it, because that will give me some much-needed time to put all of this together. Especially since I have 4 pieces of furniture to paint too, of which I still need to sand 1 1/2 of those and prime 3, and that's the type of work that I need larger blocks of time to do well. And then on days where I've still got a good block of flute teaching time, I can focus more on the sewing end of things. So this dramatically increases my odds of getting enough done in time. And the other fortunate thing is that I don't really have much left to buy for this. I need to get two more pieces of fabric: one for curtains for the closet, since I discovered that my original idea of recycling some bedsheets isn't going to work--one of them is fitted and would end up having to be significantly smaller to get rid of those darts--and one to cover the two insulated light-blocking shades so I can recycle those. And I need to get a new ceiling fan, since in looking at the original one, it's a lot easier to replace it than to paint the blades and try and find a way to get the lights less glaring. So I'm going to see if I can find a fairly inexpensive one with a covered light, preferably one that's still Energy Star-rated. And then I think that should be it.

I did have one exciting thing happen today for this room--one of my must-haves was a bookcase. Because I have a LOT of books, and am completely tired of the brackets-in-the-wall system that I've had my entire life because my dad favors them. Let me say, bookcases are ridiculously expensive. I mean, come on, it's a box with shelves, do you really need to charge a hundred bucks or more for one that's shorter than me? I was seriously considering building one, since even the cheapo IKEA ones are a lot of dough. But this week I found one on Craigslist that seemed to fit the bill perfectly--pretty much the exact dimensions I needed (including height--it's a 7-foot tall one!), and a light enough color that I can get away with not painting it. It was picked up today, and as long as I can get it through the door of the room, I think it'll work brilliantly. (Once I clean the spider egg cases off of the base, anyway... ick.) The best part: it only cost me $26!