Darn You Off Centered Window

This week I am out of town for work and my hubby is at home spending new years alone…boo. I shared on Monday that I would be posting some old

content. I have some new readers from the Advent Calendar and I thought I would show you some of my older rehabs. Today, I want to share with you my troubles with an off centered window in my Master Bedroom. The only wall the bed could be placed had a window that was not centered behind the headboard. Does any of you have this problem? Here is how I fixed it with an optical illusion.

This post was before I changed up the paint in my bedroom.  Check out my lighter, more “green” paint job here.  Now for the old post….

As I am writing this title I am thinking of The Wizard of Oz.  You know the part where Dorothy finally pulls back the green curtain to see that the Wizard of Oz is a normal man.   For a blast from your childhood here is what I am talking about:

As you saw last week that I have many curtains in my master bedroom.  We don’t have a lot of space so curtains make the space more functional.  It also softens the walls and make the room more inviting.  Just in case this is the first time you are visiting my master bedroom, here are all the places that a curtain is hiding something.

Today I would like to share what is behind this Curtain:

You can see what I am hiding a little bit in the picture above…the off centered window.  I sometimes wonder why the window was not placed in the middle of the room.  I am sure the builder wanted the windows to be symmetrical on the side of the house.  The window in the third bedroom (aka our “catch-all” room) is centered.  I don’t think I wouldn’t have noticed on the side of the house but maybe I would have and would be complaining about that on this blog instead.  Anyway, you can’t really see in this picture of what our room looked like beforehand that the window is off-centered, but if you center the bed on the wall…the window is on the left side of the bed.

The goal in hiding that window is creating an illusion to trick the eye.  Here is how I did it:

1. The window is a 36X45 inch window.  I bought a 48″ bamboo roman shade from Wal-mart.  The entire shade covers the window but the right side of the shade is covering the wall.  The shade is not centered.  You can see that here:
2. The shade has two purposes: 1.) to be a shade so if I centered it part of the window would not be covered.  2.) create an illusion.  It cannot create the illusion all by itself.  To finish if off I hung curtains and simply closed them the exact amount to make it look symmetrical.  When I did this it looked like this:

Vioila! There you have it…the awkward window hidden!  When the morning sunlight hits you can see the window.  Most of the day you cannot. 

I could fix that by putting a liner on the shade but I like the difused light!  I rarely ever open the window and when I do its just me there.  I like to keep this window shade shut because the neighbor next door can see into my bedroom from his living room.  Yikes!  No thanks.   Here is what the entire room looks like again!

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer