new home design dilemmas

If you've been following along, you know that we moved into a new place this month. A whole-lotta new place, in fact. We're talking 750ish square feet to 1,400ish square feet. With this much extra room, I'm faced with a handful of design dilemmas and I need your advice.

Design dilemma #1: Spare bedroom shelf

This shelf fit nicely in the back of our walk-in storage closet in the old place. It's a pretty basic, boring wooden shelf, but now that we're sans huge walk-in, it has to be out in the open. What to do? Leave it as is, maybe declutter it a bit? Cover it with curtains? Go back to the drawing board and search for a new or used piece of furniture to occupy the space?

Since initially starting to write this post, I make a trip to Fabricville with lovely sister-in-law C and picked up some nice, thick canvas to fashion curtains for this beast. Mum suggested putting rods a the top and bottom to keep the curtains taut, but the fabric I ended up getting has enough weight to stay in place on its own. A diy shelf curtain post is just around the corner.

Design dilemma #2: Nursery dresser

I love this dresser and I'm so excited that it's going to be in Baby B's room. It belonged to my mother and then belonged to me. It has wonderful sentimental meaning, not to mention it will also double as the changing table. It does, however, show as many years of love in its worn finish. What to do? Paint it? Stain and/or varnish it? Change the hardware or keep the originals?

Design dilemma #3: Master bedroom larger-than-life blank wall

Well, what can I say? Blank slate. We have a lot more wall space in our new bedroom and out small wall hangings seem to get lost in the vast space. I'm considering doing a collage of art or photos but I can't seem to settle on a theme. Thoughts?

I'm inspired to try something like lovely friend HH did in her own master bedroom, using miscellaneous frames.

Design dilemma #4: The bathrooms

These new bathrooms are a little strange, design-wise. Both have dark forest green tile in the tubs. Weird.

The main bath has a blue-ish-green tile floor. The master bath has a similar shade of blue-ish-green countertop.

See how mixed and matched it is? Even Husband noticed and said, "Maybe we should get some new stuff for our bathroom."

Since our budget is still feeling the generally the restraints of moving into a bigger, more expensive place, I'd like to try to do these projects on the cheap. Do you have any innovative and inexpensive solutions?