Fantasy Suite: The Great Outdoors

This posting will be a work in progress. For now I am just posting pictures and hopefully before the weekend is over I will come back and insert captions and text about how my room came to be. But for now, enjoy the pictures!

These pictures show the progress from the beginning to where it is now; it's still not finished. Ok, ok, I decided to do quick captions so you know what's going on. But I'll still come back and add more soon.

My bedroom before the project started. It was always clean, but here I am packing up and moving my things out so we can start painting.


The last of my things the night before the project began. I just have my essentials here: bed, bike, and scriptures!


We taped the room and began primeing the walls before painting them. My mom is 'cutting in' (painting around object, in corners, and along edges). I come behind her and paint what's left - the big areas of the walls and ceiling.


Here's my mom cutting in again, but with color! We started painting the ceiling and then worked our way to the walls. The ceiling was a neck cranking task as you can see.

The walls and the ceiling are finished! The ceiling is a slightly darker blue than the walls. If you've ever studied the sky you know that the sky above you is always a darker blue than the color of sky you see on the horizon. We went for that effect.


Jessica, my roommate, and my mom finishing up the last touches of the wallpaper felt we put on the wall that the photo wall mural was going up on. This wallpaper felt creates a smooth wall, which allows the photo wall mural to adhere to the wall better as well as not having the texture of the wall show through the photo wall mural.


While we waiting for the wallpaper felt to dry my mom tried her hand at creating a sunset that fades into a sky of clouds. The sunset ended up being painted over. It didn't turn out like either of us had wanted or expected; plus it conflicted with the daytime clouds on the wall. (It can't be daytime and sunset at the same time).


Painting the clouds on the ceiling. Another neck cranking job, but fun! The clouds on the ceiling didn't turn out quite how I had envisioned. They soon will be touched up to get the effect I'm looking for.


The first panel of the photo wall mural to go up! This was the part we had waited for most about this project. We were excited to finally get the photo wall mural up!


The first four center panels of the photo wall mural. They went on better than expected. Phew.


The left two panals of the photo wall murals. These were a bit trickier to put up because we now had a ceiling and the adjacent wall to work with when cutting off the excess mural.


The second to last panel of mural! This is as far as we got. There is a hole in the adjacent wall due to water damage that has yet to be fixed. In order to preserve the photo mural from getting damaged when the wall gets fixed we opted to not put it up.


The finished product! Well, almost. But you get the big picture (no pun intended). It's this gorgeous! I am very pleased with this photo mural. I LOVE waking up to this scenery each morning. It's like waking up to heaven.


More clouds! Although, we painted over these because we found there was just too many clouds and it competed with the wall mural. We left the clouds on the opposite wall of the photo mural and on the ceiling. It balanced the room out quite well. But these clouds are pretty anyway!


My bed platform. I randomly came up with the idea of having a hanging bed. Once we figured out how to do it, we went to work. This is the platform that hangs from the ceiling; the mattress rests on top. (And I do too).


I loved this part! How often does somebody get the opportunity to drill big holes into their ceiling? I was very surprised my roommate allowed me to do this and was even really excited about it too!


This picture shows how the hanging bed is supported from above the ceiling. The chain is just wrapped around a 2x4 that is screwed into a ceiling joist. Not too shabby! The two farthest 2x4's I had to screw in were extremely difficult to manage. There were two vent hoses in the way and I had about a 10'' square area to work in to screw the 2x4 to the ceiling joist. And I had to do all of that while balancing on the 2x4 ceiling joists so not to fall through the ceiling board. Yikes! Hard work.


I spent quite a bit of time in the attic drilling in the 2x4's and hanging the chains. Had to get a picture of my lovely face mask and bright orange gloves I wore!


This is me after coming down from the attic. As much as I tried to avoid the insulation it ended up getting all over me and my clothes. It felt like a thousand tiny needles poking me everywhere!


Here are the four chains hanging from the ceiling. We were just about ready to hang the bed.


We glued a piece of PVC pipe into each hole so the chain wouldn't damage the ceiling board when the bed rocked or swayed.


My hanging bed! It was so neat to finally see it up and hanging. This was another long awaited and anticipated part of the project. Very cool!


This is me sitting on my bed for the first time to make sure it wouldn't come crashing down. It took me a few days to begin to trust that it won't crash down in the middle of the night.


My 5' Moster Sak (aka: luv sak) was the next newest addition to my room. I have wanted one of these for several years and was finally excited for its arrival. It is very comfortable to relax on!

The next newest additions to my bedroom was this small table, a fish aquarium, and a large mirror. The white section of the wall that you see will soon be covered by wild flower wall paper so it will give the feel of walking or lying in the middle of a wild flower field.


One may think that fish will go into this fish aquarium. Not so. I will be growing my own butterflies in this aquarium. They are on their way in the mail right now. Hopefully they'll make it. I will be putting soil and planting flowers in this aquarium to make a nice little habitate for my butterflies to live in. Who ever thought you could grow your own butterflies?


I just received these foam pads that create my bed. Before I was using a futon mattress pad. The bottom piece of foam is 5'' thick and the top piece is 3'' thick. The top piece is also softer than the bottom, hence the two different pieces.

And this is my bed all made! As you have probably noticed my bed is hanging right next to my window. I purposely planned it this way so every night I could fall asleep looking up at the stars and every morning I would wake up to the morning sun and sky. This is one of my favorite parts about the bed because no matter what time of day it is I am looking out into the sky and am surrounded by nature - my one true love! Another feature that I love about my bed is that is sways and rocks. It is very relaxing to fall asleep to the gentle sway of the bed.

I still have a bit of work left to do on the room; touch up the clouds, start growing my butterflies, hanging pictures and shelves, as well as getting and putting up the wild flower wall paper. So keep checking back every now and then for fantasy suite updates. And again, I will be adding more about how this all came about soon.

I am so grateful for my best friend Angie for increasing my love of nature in so many different ways. Many of the elements and inspirations for my bedroom came from her influence on me of her passion for the outdoors, especially the clouds. She's taught me to always look up in more ways than one. BFF & BBP F&FA!

I am very grateful for my mom, for without her this wouldn't have become what it is. Thank you for sharing your talents and your time with me to create a fantasy dream room! Thanks for teaching me some of what you know. I absolutely loved spending that time with you! Cows!