Master Bedroom

I am officially calling the bedroom done! There is always room for slight tweaks, but as far as I am concerned this is the 2^nd room in the house that is completely finished (the first being the hallway bathroom). A lot of work went into this room so I am going to take it picture by picture to explain each of the projects and interesting finds, but first here is a view of the finished bedroom:

The project that took the longest and was the hardest for us to decide on was our accent wall. As you can see we tried first to stencil the wall, but it lacked color and really made the room feel drab, not to mention you could see every little imperfection up close. When at Lowe’s one night we decided to try wall paper. The sales associate was also extremely helpful and told us if we lightly painted the wall paper afterwards it would give it more dimension. So we put up wall paper and tried to lightly paint. That was an epic fail it looked like some kid came in and just went to town on our wall. It was a nightmare to live with and we could not wait to paint it a solid color. We picked a light orange, put up a crown molding and are super pleased with the results.

There are also all the awesome furniture pieces to talk about too. While in OH we were very diligent when looking for awesome craigslist finds and found both the night stands and king-size head and foot board. The king head and foot board were an awesome find for only $49.

Alex was kind enough to paint the items for me while I was in OH at training this summer.

He used our paint sprayer, which saved tons of time!  It took 5 minutes per coat for the headboard.

Unfortunately we did not have a bed frame long enough to attach the headboard and footboard together around the king size mattress. Fortunately Alex, by himself, fixed the problem….he’ll write the following section.

My idea was to connect the headboard and footboard with 2x8’s to create a freestanding bedframe that fits snugly around the mattress and boxspring but does not actually support anything but itself.  Making the connections secure and strong was the biggest challenge.  My solution was to use dowel rods and wood glue to hold the boards in place at each end.  Lining up the holes was very tricky to say the least.  

You can see the holes drilled into the leg of the headboard. 

The worst part about doing this project alone was keeping things aligned while the glue dried.  I had to stack books and boxes to support everything.

The following picture shows the connection at the footboard.  This crossbrace was screwed and glued in place to help keep the whole assembly from twisting.  The bedframe stops before the brace, and the boxspring sits right on top of it since the brace is aligned with the height of the frame.

The connection at the headboard was braced with a small bracket and some screws.  

Once everything was in place and the glue had dried I painted the wood to match the headboard and footboard.

The night stand was a craigslist find at $14 for the set, but the “before” photos explain why they were so cheap. They were scratched and covered in old tape and gobs of tape residue.

Alex took the doors apart and removed the hardware.  Then the residue was painstakingly scraped away with the help of spray Goof-Off.  All surfaces were then sanded and painted, and once dry the hardware was reinstalled.  Here is the finished product.  I liked the color but not the aged brown-gold handles.

Easy fix: just $1.19/handle at Lowe’s for more modern black handles.

As you can see we also replaced the rocking chair that my parents gave us with an original George Mulhauser Plycraft chair and ottoman, commonly known as the “Mr. Chair” of the 1960’s. I am absolutely in love with it. It does need some minor TLC, but I won’t attempt anything until I am satisfied with all my research on the subject since this is essentially an investment item as well as a piece of furniture.

  

One of my favorite items is the dresser set we found at a little antique store in Fort Walton Beach. The only thing we did to them was replace the original handles with ones we found at Anthropologie. We got a good deal on those too: on sale from $10 to $2.95/handle.  I love how it gives it a little modern pop. The cardboard moose head was a birthday gift I got for Alex from Cardboard Safari.

The last thing we did to the room was to organize and brighten it. As you can see in the next picture I was storing all my jewelry under the dresser. Under the dresser was the worst place for all my necklaces; they became tangled and I never really could see what I had. I found the solution in the cheapest, quickest and easiest, but still stylish way to store the jewelry. All I did was stain some scrap pieces of wood and add some simple dresser knobs found at Lowe’s.  Now the bottom of the dresser is the home of our Roomba, known as Pumba.

I found that even though I love the lamps they were just lacking in color or brightness. I felt they were making my side of the room feel darker than I wanted. To rectify this I just did a simple spray paint job so it looks a little antiqued. I then scored some round lamp shade at Lowe’s on sale for $3 that I covered with an awesome print I found on sale at JoAnn’s.

Last but not least…a quick look at the smaller but nonetheless interesting items in the bedroom.

I love the unique items I have acquired to organize my earrings and bracelets. The hand I picked up at a community yard sale in Seaside, the scenic town in Florida where the Truman Show was filmed.  The cheese grater idea came from Pintrest. So needless to say when I saw a yellow one at a thrift store I jumped on it. Last is my egg dish which I picked up at Anthropologie when I bought the dresser knobs. 

  

As you can tell Alex and I are huge fans of art. The charcoal artwork in the top left corner of the group of pictures below was done while I was in high school. My very best friend in the world did it and it happens to be of me.  The next image shows two pieces I picked up while on my 3hr layover in Australia returning home from New Zealand. I had the two paintings framed together once I got back to FL. There was no way I was passing up the opportunity to purchase something to prove I was there, even if it was just for a few hours. The lower set of photos shows a Norwegian trunk that my parents had made for me when we lived in Norway. The top depicts Preikestolen, commonly known as Pulpit Rock and the sides are Rosemaling (decorative painting) that is common in Scandinavia.