Over the weekend I shared a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes of our recent master bedroom makeover.  It is something  Audley and I are both extremely excited about and love the way it turned out!  After ten years of mix and match bedspreads and clutter, we have cleaned up, painted, and decorated a fairly minimalist and elegant space that I have enjoyed oh-so-much in the last two weeks!

In case you haven’t seen it, here is the before:

I saved myself the embarrassment of showing our cluttered dresser  and chest, but as you can see there was nothing welcoming, cozy, glamorous or special about our master bedroom.  In fact I avoided our room as much as possible.

At last, though, we have a space we are absolutely smitten with that only involved one weekend of painting, replacing the negatives and styling.

While I have not adhered to this philosophy as I would like (mainly because I get caught up in other things way too easily), I firmly believe our homes and especially our bedrooms should be a haven from the world, a place of beauty and peace to reflect who we are.  We all have different styles that represent this for us.  In our case and at least in this space our style was a clean, minimalistic, and relaxing room.

Keeping our existing furniture (that we did not want to paint), working with a strange colored carpet (that I actually like), & having a smallish budget, here is our new master bedroom.

I wanted our room to look put together, but at the same time I wanted anything but a cluttered space!  I am really so over clutter and at the end of the day, peaceful is all I require.

 

 

 

 

One of the worst features in our room were these horrible swingy blinds that came with the house over a picture window.  Instead of keeping he window covered with blinds I chose white draperies from Bed, Bath & Beyond to keep our room feeling bright and clean.  We have a smaller window as well, and I used the same style curtains on them.

 

We added a book-case to house some of our favorite reads, then also  mounted a television.  I never thought I would have a television in our room, but Audley had a plan.

 We completed our bedroom flip the weekend before I had surgery two week ago.  He knew I would be spending a lot of time resting in our room as I was on virtual bedrest for one solid week and now on limited activity.  He wanted me to enjoy movies and show I liked. This was such a sweet and thoughtful gesture as I know my kiddos have their favorite shows as well and didn’t want to feel like I was the TV commander just because I was “sick”.

 

 

Final touches included an orchid on the night stand and a large potted plant.  I’m all about green plants in the house and feel like every space deserves to have greenery.  Audley and my Bradley put together a combination of a couple of plants to fill a pot that complemented our room.

When it came to designing our master bedroom I had a few must-haves and definitely wanted to share my version of what makes a perfect master bedroom:

1. Three Sources of Light.  In the bedroom lighting is important for a multitude of reasons.  Natural light from windows is perfect for cleaning and day-to-day tasks.  It’s soothing and a way to bring the outdoors inside.  Soft beside lighting from lamps helps to create a peaceful mood as you are winding down for the evening.  The third source of light should be your more powerful overhead lights.  These are necessary when you are getting ready in the mornings or even later in the evening as well.

2.  Window treatments that block light.  Windows treatments are the icing on the cake when it comes to finishing a space, but you want them to be more than decoration, you want them to be functional as well.  I use lined draperies as not only do they keep the room dark for you to sleep at night, they also allow you to sleep in a little longer on those days when you don’t have to set an alarm clock.  Lined draperies serve a second purpose as well; they act as an insulation on cold winter and hot summer days if you chose to keep them pulled.

3.  Luxury bedding.  Now let me be clear here, you can have luxury bedding and not spend a fortune.  Choose good quality sheets of 500+ theadcount for soft sheets that will last longer.  You can find these at HomeGoods or TJ Maxx, or hit the White Sales at your favorite department stores.  Also make sure you have a good mattress that both you and your spouse can agree on so that you will enjoy a more restful nights sleep.

4.  Color.  Choose a color that is relaxing and peaceful to you.  Our bedrooms should be a place we can escape at the end of the day so bring in sea, ocean and earth tones for color that will create a tranquil space.

5. Rugs or Carpeting.  Nothing is more of a harsh wake-up call than to set bare feet on an ice cold floor in the mornings.  If you have hard-wood flooring add a few rugs around the bed to keep your feet cozy and add a little pop of color too!

6.  Personal Items.  Adding personal touches of your life around your bedroom truly makes it yours.  Since our master bedroom is a shared space, I have wedding pictures and other photographs from special moments in our life framed around the room.  Antiques, mirrors, and even figurines that represent the space also make fabulous items for personalizing a bedroom.  We DO NOT have pictures of our kids in our room; simply put, this is our space to retire from the hectic reality of parenting and work.  I don’t want those things to be last on my mind when I lay down at night.

7.  Organization.  An organized space is probably the most important element of a master bedroom.  Keep everything neat, tidy and in its designated space to help eliminate stress and encourage peacefulness.  Purchase pieces for your room that will help with organization, or designate space in your closet for keeping clutter put away.  We have night stands with a “hidden” drawer which is perfect for storing extra phone chargers as well as a notebook for jotting down thoughts or things to do for the next day.  In our closet we have shelves for shoes, and clear boxes for small items we only use occasionally.

8.  Music.  Music is totally optional, but I absolutely love music.  Country, Pop, Classical, Jazz, Broadway, etc…. I enjoy almost all varieties.  And I love to have music available in my bedroom.  I use an iPod, so a docking station is just perfect for projecting music, but with all of the creative ways furniture is made now you can also hide a stereo if you chose.  Music is a great way to set the mood for whatever you are up to.  I love music I can dance around to when I clean.  I enjoy a little Doris Day or Frank Sinatra when I am ironing and in the evenings when I read or am trying to wind down I love soft relaxing music.

I am so happy with our new bedroom space. It has truly been the restful room we wanted as I have spent a lot of time in there to truly experience it.  We also stayed within reason on our budget which makes me like the space even more.  For product info check below the photos of the room.

What do you think?  Do you have any bedroom must-haves?  

I would love to hear them!

After nearly ten years, and four moves to three different states, I have a styled master bedroom!  Honestly, I cannot even begin to put into words how excited I am.  When we have moved it has always seemed that other spaces come first and we never quite make it to our own.  Now, at last, Audley and I have a teenager-free space all our own.

And it is quite lovely indeed.

Deciding what to do with our room has actually been an ongoing process for right at a year now.  Color decisions, budget, and a lack of time to actually pull it all together were the largest factors in our delay.  Then a few weeks back, Audley & I finally just made it happen and lets just say sometimes you say forget the budget and pull out the credit card.

Color…. well, it just doesn’t happen for me.

 This is what we started with.

It was not a very welcome space for exhausted parents to escape to in the evenings for sure.  In fact, it was such a miserable space for me that I even hated folding clothes and putting them away as often as I should because I couldn’t bear to be in there.

This is the color of the walls when we moved in.  I could’ve dealt with chocolate-brown, even with my dark furniture, but this lackluster color of brown reminded me of too many diapers I have changed in my life.

I love the Kentucky Derby print of Audley’s, but let’s be honest, hanging it with horseshoes over the bed was not the best design choice I ever made.

I just wanted something on the walls.

And if our room wasn’t unattractive enough we had these awful swinging blinds hanging over the picture window that came with the house.

When it came to budget and color the two actually had to work hand in hand. We have a very strange aqua colored carpet throughout our entire house.    While I do like it to some extent, it does make for challenging decorating decisions.  While one day I would like to replace the carpet, it’s definitely not in our budget now.  Nor is new furniture.

The bedroom suite Audley and I have now is 12 years old.  We saved and saved to purchase this making it very special to me.  It was very traditional in style and with its dark wood.  I wanted whatever we decided to do in the bedroom to accommodate our existing furniture. While painted furniture is pretty I do not like an entire room of painted furniture, so the dark wood is completely my style.

Using our aqua colored carpet and dark wood as our base we started thinking and wondering what would look the best.

That was actually easier than what I thought it would be. As I was walking through Costco (of all places) I found a 6 piece bedding set for $125.00 that just spoke to me.

It really did.

Gray and white became the perfect color solution for our bedroom.

So I bought the bedding set,a nd headed home where it sat for almost year waiting on us to make time to finish making choices and do this room!

When Audley and I decided to just take a plunge and do our weekend makeover I spent several hours at Home Depot matching color.  We are very partial to Behr paint, so I didn’t even consider another brand.

After pondering over the different shades of gray in our bedding set I finally settled on Behr’s “Centre Stage” as the perfect color for our space.  I purchased two gallons of the silvery color in Behr’s Premium Plus formula.

While out and about getting ready for our project we also purchased plastic drop cloths to protect the carpet, Frog tape for the trim, a small Purdy paint brush for cutting in the edges and corners,  paint rollers and pans, and rags for clean-up without ruining towels or wash cloths at the house.

Audley moved all of the furniture with the help of our son.  I dusted the trim so we could apply the Frog tape (very necessary if you want your painters tape to stick), and we laid the plastic drop cloths out to keep our carpet protected from paint.  While Audley cut in the corners and around the doors and windows, I began rolling the walls.  We debated whether or not to use a paint sprayer, but decided the space was too small.

The only other “tool” we needed for our little project was this platform ladder made by Werner that has become a fixture in all our home projects.   We purchased this one at Lowes about eight years ago and couldn’t do without it!

Since Behr Premium Plus paint is such great quality, we were able to cover the old brown color fairly easily with one coat, which dried in two hours, then we quickly rolled a second coat to make sure all the lines and streaks were blended.

By 9:00 Saturday evening we were putting furniture back in place and added the accessories to the walls and tabletops on Sunday afternoon.

Since this was a budget makeover, I was excited to not only find a gorgeous contemporary mirror at Costco, but also a gorgeous set of crystal lamps with ….. gray shades!

I used Cree light bulbs in our lamps.  Yes, I know they are a more expensive option, but after being introduced to these fabulous bulbs at the Haven Conference last summer we have slowly been transitioning over to them.  Our house is 35 years old, so the wiring is often not our friend.  Cree bulbs are the new energy-saving bulbs and where we were blowing and changing traditional light bulbs monthly throughout the house, we have not changed a single Cree bulb in nearly a year.

So overall they are saving us money.

We also had a couple of pen and ink sketches of rooms from the Biltmore Estate that we wanted for our walls.  I love these collectible prints and the element of old that they added to our semi-contemporary space.  Mixing elements is something I really like in decorating our home.

Final touches to the room included a TV mounted on the wall, something I swore we would never have in our room (I’ll explain the reason we decided this when I reveal the entire room) and green plants.

This is just the behind the scenes of our new room.  Stop back by this weekend for the full reveal!