Alternate title: Another One Bites the Dust.

 I said in my post about repainting our sitting room that I had no plans for repainting any other rooms in the house.

…I lied.

Or I didn’t lie, exactly, because I didn’t really know what the next couple of days held. In the words of three-year-old Clive, “I was only pretending!” I can’t be held responsible. Because paint I did.

Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we? Here’s the master bedroom when we bought the house:

Here it is about three years later when we finally got around to working on the room (it was almost the last one we did!) This pic is circa 2011.

(Note that the mattress is on the floor. It stayed that way for a while, until we changed the guest room into a room for Ephraim and Clive–then we stuck our king mattress on top of the queen-sized platform bed which, surprisingly, it just fit on. The nice thing about sleeping on a mattress on the floor is that you don’t really have to worry about the kids falling off of your bed. The bad part is trying to get up off of the mattress when you’re eight months pregnant.)

This room has had many incarnations, none of which I have pictures of because I haven’t really cared for any of them. The incarnations have all been mostly the same, just different furniture all around the bed and different art over the bed, but the bed remained stuck in place.

Jeremy took the opportunity of having to move the bed for repainting purposes to switch the bed to the far wall of the room–a move we have both been considering but haven’t taken on. The most logical place for the bed was centered between the two windows, which is why we put it there in the first place…and why it’s been sitting there for a full five years…did I mention how much I like to move furniture? That static bed was killing me. (Hyperbole, of course…normal people don’t care if their bed stays in one spot, I guess.)

Actually–and I am somewhat ashamed to admit this–the whole room was on my last nerve. It had gotten to the point that it was nearly impossible for me to clean it because I disliked so much what it looked like even when it was clean. So a major change was just what I needed–well, we needed, actually.

The room, now:

The paint is Glidden’s Shaded Fern, which ended up much greener on the walls than it looked in the can. This is totally fine with me, but let that be a warning to anyone considering it who is hoping for something a little less saturated.

[adinserter name=”In Content”]

I still have art to hang and lots of details to eventually fix, but I couldn’t resist going ahead and sharing the room now. There is a real ease in here. It’s not very fussy–where before I felt like this room needed all new furniture and an extra window or two to live up to its full potential, now it’s just a place to come and cozy up with a cup of coffee–or maybe three little boys and a Richard Scarry storybook. I don’t understand what it is about the darker color that lets me off the hook of making the room feel “perfect”, but whatever it is, I love it.

The painting over the bed is by my uncle–it is called Road to Emmaus and it is my favorite painting ever.

As ever, a my style is hodgepodge of whatever’s lying around. Flea market chair, throw crocheted by a family member, a pillow that’s lived in every room in the house. Here are the curtains from the before of the sitting room.

Paint-by-number from Goodwill, and a oil pastel kitty that I did when I was maybe twelve or so? Anselm’s obsessed with the cat picture. That’s why it’s crooked in some of the pictures–he keeps trying to take it off the wall.

One last look at how far we’ve come:

I really, honestly, and truly do not have any further plans for painting any other space in the house some crazy dark color. Scout’s honor.