progress post: a bedroom update.

We’ve been navigating through a variety of life happenings lately and our house, per usual, takes the back seat. So I thought I’d update on another room, that like our bath, that has been finished up until the fun decor part!

Aside from the second upstairs bedroom which is currently a giant storage space, our newly appointed master bedroom had the least drastic of changes. We did have to remove two exterior facing walls in order to add insulation to our insulation-less house. New drywall, mudding, priming, painting, new window frames, and new trim. While extremelyyyyy tedious- mostly just small cosmetic changes in the grand scheme of things. We decided to take on this project shortly after we got married. For the most part, the mess could be quarantined in this situation. And we set up camp in the living room for a couple months.

While not completely without drama- our bedroom is the reason why we hired out a painter for the front half of our main level. We tried our hand at a paint sprayer and felt like we were wasting A LOT of paint… so either the tool was broken (which we did call support and they were very helpful, but couldn’t 100% solve our dilemma, so it’s possible!) or user error. I’m going to assume the later. But don’t you worry, we definitely had a nice little photoshoot in our initial blissfully ignorant pre-painting state.

The master bedroom closet was a slightly bigger project, as we increased the square footage by four. Not quite a standard size walk-in, but much larger than it was in 1960. We opened it to an adjacent closet from the third upstairs bedroom, which we have since removed. We then bumped the back wall of the closet out about an extra 18 inches. We are using Ikea’s Algot system for organization and will have a post about that too.

So all the heavy duty stuff has been done! And we are living in a world of white. The bedroom and closet function, but they are begging for color, organization, and new furniture! I cannot wait for those to be the focus someday. It’s hard for us to keep the mess in one designated area. As we work on the kitchen, everything accumulates in other rooms… dust, papers, food, stuff. I hate it. So we don’t want to add more, albeit new, stuff. But we’re also still in love with watching our house evolve. And eventually we’ll have much more storage that we are severely lacking now.

By the way, you can find our initial ideas for the bedroom here and the closet plan here.

So about that photoshoot…

One of us may have been a bit more into it than the other…

date night selfie.

james from rivertown woodcraft helping us with our new window frames.

mike the drywaller, our vip.

mike's right hand kitten.

lavender walls and (once) teal trim. #glam

our short lived careers as professional paint sprayers.

mitten house swag.

bye lavender walls!

contemplating fixtures.

this is so aesthetically appealing to me.

♥

space claimed.

master bedroom closet plans.

In going through this renovation process, I've noticed I have become more aware of how we use things and what we need. Dustin and I met with a kitchen designer last year and he asked us to think about how we have used past kitchens, which cabinets go where, what works for us. Thrilled to even be thinking about a new space, we had the mindset of "Anything will be better than what we have! We'll make it work!" But being without for a while now, you learn how the simplest design decisions that are made with intention, serve a purpose, have a function, will totally enhance your life. That sounds so deep... but in the smallest way, it can make your process and your DAY better. So we're trying to keep that mindset (without overthinking things... which we do anyway) as we're customizing each of these new spaces.

One space I'm super jazzed about is our master bedroom closet. We quadrupled the square footage of the original 1960 size. It's still smaller than a standard walk-in, but much better! For the last year and a half, our "closet" has been the spare bedroom. It pretty much looks like a enclosed space of rolling hills if the rolling hills were piles of clothes...

So en lieu of eventual closet organization, and an upcoming trip to Ikea, this post is dedicated to the smallest room in our house- the closet. During demo, we made a recessed niche in the wall, in between the studs. I felt so proud of this small but intentional decision. We did the same thing in our bathroom shower as well.

And what will this little closet niche hold?! Sunglasses, hats, jewelry- oh my! Only time will tell. But holy moly are we SO ready to have a functioning closet again.

MOOD BOARD

Also white and bright like the bedroom- helps the focus be on mah clothes. Intentional design, cute organizational containers, and functional space saving techniques. 

SOURCE  ||  A B C D E F G

master bedroom plans.

During the initial demo days we discovered our house had nooooo insulation. So we're adding insulation one wall at a time, room by room. In the master bedroom we have two exterior walls. So far, we have added insulation, new drywall, primed, and painted. We combined our closet with another room's closet and increased the square footage a bit. With those updates crossed off our to-do list, most of my inspiration is for decor. The bedrooms are pretty much lovely blank canvases. 

MOOD BOARD

White and bright, neutrals with pops of color! Dustin requests an accent wall in there too. Thinking maybe wallpaper? On the hunt for a mid-century dresser because it's not an MCM-inspired bedroom unless you have one, right?!

SOURCE  ||  A B C D E F