I just can’t let sleeping dogs lie. Not while they’re in our master bedroom at least. Maybe it was the light gray walls + gray bedding with only a bit of yellow as a relief, but I just kept feeling like our master needed a bit more pizzaz. After our recent nightstand update, I was still feeling like something was missing in this room, so I set out in search of some inspiration.
I toyed around with the idea of an accent wall behind our headboard to add interest, but I wasn’t sure how it would look. After tinkering around on Behr.com with their Paint Your Place application, I concluded that a painted accent wall was NOT what this room was lacking.
Yellow was awful…
Even teal seemed to highlight that off-center window.
The only option I liked even a little bit was just a darker version of the gray we already have on our walls!
After lots of thinking, I decided the real thing bothering me wasn’t the wall color but that silly window on the left side of the bed. I really only liked the darker gray paint color because it helped camouflage the window more than the other colors did. I considered hanging a large dark-framed piece of art behind the lamp on the right nightstand to balance out the window, but we really love our gold mirror above the bed and didn’t want art to compete with it.
This photo sold me on the idea, and less than 2 hours later I had this!
Want to see how I did it? By myself? For F-R-E-E!?
Here’s what I started with. Four gray curtain panels on wimpy silver curtain rods.
I also happened to have these 2 shower curtain rods (one I’d painted silver previously) and a smattering of rod brackets.
Since our curtains were dark gray, I decided to paint the rods black so they’d blend in. All they needed was a quick spray and a few minutes of drying time.
The rod brackets were a different story. To make hanging the curtain rods easier, I decided to use the four identical small silver brackets. The only problem was they were too small to hold the thick curtain rods.
Enter: The vice on our workbench in the garage.
First I tried positioning the bracket like this and hitting it with a hammer to stretch out the “cup” of the bracket. This only resulted in the bracket bending at the joint just above the vice – not what I was going for!
I repositioned the bracket and tried again. This time, I couldn’t get much of a swing in with the hammer and that curved section wouldn’t budge.
Finally I realized I could clamp the curved portion with the vice and squeeze the curve open. Then all it took was repositioning the curve and clamping until it was wide enough to hold the shower curtain rod.
After clamping 2 of the 4 brackets, here’s a comparison shot I took so you could see the change.
Once all the brackets were ready, I measured and hung the first curtain rod. The brackets were all positioned 2 inches from the ceiling.
Here’s a shot of both curtain rods in place. You’ll notice I left a gap on the left side of the wall. This is partially because my curtains rods wouldn’t quite extend the full length of the wall and partially because we didn’t want to center the bed on the wall (which would put it in front of the window), so I decided to keep the width of the curtains as similar on both sides of the bed as possible.
After the rods were up, it was just a matter of hanging the panels. I hung all 4 panels behind the bed and made sure the seams between the 2 center panels were positioned just over the hook used to hang our mirror. Do you see the hook in the photo below?
After a little fluffing and mirror-hanging, here’s our updated master bedroom!
The lamps cast a soft glow on the gray panels. You can still see the light from the window through the panels during the day, but I may eventually add a light-blocking shade behind the curtains for a more seamless look.
When the lamps are off, you really notice the gold ribbon detail I added a couple weeks ago.
I love how dramatic that mirror looks on top of the gray panels!
Once the panels were up, it was time to address the other window in the room. At the moment it’s not overwhelmingly pretty, but I did manage to raise the curtain rod to the same height as the panels behind the bed and hang a fifth (fresh out of the dryer and wrinkled) gray panel up. When I found these curtains at Ikea, I bought an extra set – one panel was used to make the Euro shams on the bed and the other is now hanging on this window! After a bit of ironing, it will look 100% better. 🙂
I managed to snap a few more photos after the sun went down to give you a good idea of what the room looks like at night. Off-center window be gone!
And now for a side by side comparison! Quite the difference, no?
So there you have it, a free 2-hour solution to an off-center window and quite the dramatic little bedroom as a result. Are you a fan of the wall of curtains or would you have busted out the paint can? I’d love to hear what you think!
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