The End of the Grateful Dead Bears...

We moved into our house almost 10 years ago and at the time I was on a ban from any remodeling or home improvement projects.  Why a ban?  Well my husband couldn't handle any more of my disasters.  Examples...

1. Hours and hours of painful wallpaper removal.
2. Coming home to find his home office painted periwinkle blue (with a nice spill on white berber carpet covered up by a newly moved desk.)
3. The brilliant idea that when the exterior of our house needed painting to change the color.  It went from chocolate brown to mint green.  I went for a sage and it turned out mint.  We were poor recently graduated college kids.  No way we could afford to repaint it.  Plus it took forever to paint.
4. The fact that I replaced the trim boards in our kitchen with boards I cut on our living room floor with a hack saw.  No lie.  My dad fixed that one for us with proper 45 degree cuts, with a real saw.
5. Painting our master bedroom twice.  First attempt was a bad green.  Note to self...don't attempt green paint.

Well, this ban on any home improvement projects meant that I had to live with Grateful Dead Bears in the guest bedroom.  The previous owner had hand painted them in his son's room.    I hated these bears.   Every time I walked passed the room they taunted me...."You can't paint over me..." Eventually I gave up on them and ignored the taunts.

Here is a photo of the room before. 

The room isn't very large, so I wanted to make the space appear as large as possible. The wall color inspiration came from this photo I found on Pinterest.

I went with what I would describe as a robin's egg blue or even a Tiffany's blue.  I start by putting a coat of primer over the bears.  One coat of primer and 2 coats of paints covered them perfectly.

I searched for hours and hours online for headboard ideas. I wanted something unique.   I saw lots of people taking a panel door on its side as a headboard. 

But I wanted height to elongate the room.  Then I had a brilliant idea.  About a year after we moved in the house I thought I could break the no improvement rule and went out and bought all new 6 panel doors for the house.  Well I bought slab doors and not pre-hung.  So they literally have been sitting in my garage ever since.  Oops.   Well, I realized if I put two together, painted them bright white, and stood them behind the bed, it would be the focal point of the room I was looking for with a headboard.

I have to say it turned out better than I expected.  

I reused the bedding from the room before but added some throw pillows that matched the wall color perfectly.   I found small bedside lamps that pulled the gray from the bedspread. I found the pillows and lamps at Target.

For the side tables I used vintages one that were passed down to me from my Mom and Dad.  I love that they don't match; I am not a big fan of matchy-matchy.  I also added some grommet topped curtains and a clock.  I rehung the painting which was a gift from a good friend of mine.

Here are some more photos to give a better idea of the room.  It was hard to capture the color perfectly, so I tried different lighting.

And a final before and after: