Project House Update: The Master Bedroom

I now have a new favorite room in the house. And it only took us over a year to tackle it.

When we moved into our house, the previous owners hadn't invested any money in cleaning up the house since they moved out. They patched no holes, cleaned up no scuffs, and left every random and outdated fixture and outlet in place. The worst room was by far the master bedroom. The walls were beat up and dirty, there were outlets so old I'd never seen anything like them before, and you could tell exactly where the bed was because they installed reading lights about three inches above where our bed sits.

Former Owners' Master Bedroom

We left those lights there exactly one night until we realized there was no saving them. We covered the holes with some purchased plates and went on with our lives.

Well, we finally did it. It took us a year to start and a week to complete it, but we did it. And points to Dan for making it last a week. We usually try to tackle rooms in one weekend and just end up stressed out and angry. Now we have a strategy to redo a room and it should save us a lot of headaches.

So here's what it looked like when we started.

Master Bedroom - Before

We put samples on the wall months ago and purchased all the paint at Memorial Day. I believe the color is called "Snowdrop". After months of staring at four nearly identical paint swatches for months on end, we were 99.9999% sure on this color.

Originally, the ceiling and the walls were going to be the same color and my mom would paint on some clouds to create a sky on the ceiling, but I changed my mind and thought it would make the already low ceiling look even lower and too young. We agreed to save this for a different room, maybe a future nursery. Instead, we decided the ceiling would be crisp white.

On Saturday, Day 1, we moved out the majority of the furniture, removed the wall plates, lights, and ceiling fan, and painted the ceiling. Also, we patched all the holes in the walls, including the holes where the reading lights used to live. Oh! And Dan installed the new ceiling fan! It's one of the few things we haven't argued about when it comes to home stuff. We both love it. It reminds me of a propeller.

Master Bedroom - Day 1

Sunday, we decided that the door to our bathroom should be the same white. It was painted the same gross bisque/blah beige color as the walls and I did not want a reminder of how gross the room had looked before. I only painted the door frame, but I'll go back and paint the door itself sometime soon.

Monday, Day 3 ,we tackled the biggest, most complicated wall in the room and the room was officially blue. Even with all the edging, it only took us about two hours to get it all done.

Master Bedroom - Day 3

Thursday, Day 4 (we had plans Tuesday and Wednesday evenings), we tried to finish the wall our bed goes on with enough time for it to completely dry before going to bed, but we failed. So, that night, we slept with the bed in the middle of the room and used my dresser as a head board. We did manage, though, to complete two full walls.

Friday, Day 5, while I was at work, Dan finished painting the last wall. I came home to a completely painted room.

Saturday, Dan installed new, clean white outlets and the recessed ceiling light. (Long story, but Dan found a great deal on Amazon for four LED recessed lights, but they only sent us one! So, until the rest are delivered, our room has one empty hole for the missing light.) Also, a couple of months ago, we took my sister to Ikea, and while we were there, we purchased coordinating dressers.

Dan's dresser and my dresser

We decided to wait to set them up until after we painted the bedroom because we didn't want to have to move them out of the room. We finally got to start setting them up on Saturday. Dan set mine up on Saturday and I set his up on Sunday.

Sunday, Day 6, while Dan was out for the morning, I set up his dresser as a surprise. My mantra was "I have two mechanical engineering degrees. I will not be defeated by a stupid Ikea dresser!" I also finished rearranging the furniture in the room. All by myself! Let me tell you, it is not easy moving around all that furniture by yourself. Wait, no, I had cats, but they only made things more difficult, usually by creeping under furniture I was barely able to hold up, let alone try not to drop it on a cat. Fun...

And here's the "completed" room! Isn't it sooooo much better?

Master Bedroom - After

Here's the list of stuff still to do:

• Finish painting the door white.
• Install the second recessed light.
• Purchase pretty knobs for my dresser.
• Hang curtains to cover the terrible blinds. We've agreed that, although the blinds are atrocious, they are very functional. So, the plan of record is to hang some long, thick curtains beside the window and they should hide the blinds when they're open.
• Buy a headboard/bed frame. We're still using my old dresser as a make shift headboard until we can find one so we don't get the fresh wall gross with "head dirt".
• Hang art and rearrange knick-knacks.
• Deal with the fireplace. This one is a biggie, but the bedroom has a beehive fireplace that's just a pain. It's stereotypically Southwestern, it takes up a lot of wall space, and it doesn't work. Currently I've set up a bunch of candles in it, so it's kind of pretty, but it's just a pain more than anything. In a perfect world, we'd just get rid of it completely, but we've settled on making it over. We didn't paint it because of what we may do to it down the line, so it stands out even more. I'll go into more detail when we finally get to it, but for now, it's my White Whale. 

I just can't stop looking at this pretty new room. Dan says it feels like we're staying in a hotel because it's so different. It's just so clean and bright and young.

Sam's sexy pose in the new room

And it smells of new paint and particle board. Yummy.