The Little Bench That Could

Posting these next few photos is not the easiest thing to do. Kinda embarrassing. My master bedroom is the most neglected area in our home. Our door is always firmly closed when people come to visit and I go in there only to sleep. It hasn't really changed at all since the day Trent and I moved in three years ago...

We plunked down our king sized bed centered on the biggest wall in the room. We placed a couple of cheapy Ikea MALM dressers along the one side and Trent cut a piece of white laminate to go across the top so the dressers could act as a vanity. Not a lot of thought went into it but we just needed to get it up and functional. Over the course of the last few years I would lay in bed at night staring at the closet and bathroom door, on the opposite side of the room, and try to think of what I wanted to see happen in this space. Let me tell you, bathroom doors and closets are not a very inspiring view. A complete decorating block.

Enter the little bench that could. My mom found this great vintage leather bench at an auction and walked away with it for $5.00. It has a small split in the stitching but other than that it's in great shape. She was hoping she could flip it online. When I saw it in her living room last weekend I knew Trent would love it and thought maybe it could work at the end of our bed. After some tough negotiating my mom said I could have it for $10.00. Win win- I still got a great deal and my mom made %100 on her investment. As expected Trent was pretty excited when I lugged it into the house at 11:00 at night. 

However it didn't work with the height of our bed and even if we lowered the bed there wasn't much room left between the bench and the closet doors. 

There really was nowhere else in the house it could go  other than our bedroom (with only 1100 square feet and 3 kids space fills up fast) and I wasn't ready to give it up just yet.

This little bench has completely unblocked me. My dreaming went a little like this- wouldn't the bench look great under the windows... if only the bed wasn't in the way... where else could the bed possibly go?... It would fit along the walls where the dressers are, but then there is no where for both dressers... wait a minute? Haven't the dressers only really served as a place for piles of junk that need to be sorted and it's always so covered in crap that you can't do your makeup there anyway? (did I mention a whole lot of stuff got shovelled into the closet before we snapped these pics)... Why yes that is very true Cory... light bulb moment. So the dressers have been separated and one moved out, the bed now faces the windows and the bench is in it's rightful place under them. I can't get enough of the new layout, the room feels so much bigger, and the new view out the south facing windows is much more inspiring. Now my brain is going crazy with decorating ideas and I'll give you a rundown on a few of them next week, once I've had time to organize my thoughts. I think it's safe to say that this room can only get better.

It's amazing how one little item and some furniture shifting can really inspire you. So if you're stuck in a similar place feeling like nothing is really working then try moveing some pieces around and reevaluate what really needs to stay, and see if that gets things going.