Author: The Homemakers

Upstairs Bathroom Renovation

Upstairs Bathroom Renovation

The first room we finished 100% was the upstairs bathroom. It was the only full bathroom in the house when we closed and is currently the only bathroom in the entire house. Yes, we removed the powder room (you’ll understand why later) so until our 

Introducing, House #3!

Introducing, House #3!

I’m honestly not too sure where to start, but I’ve got to start somewhere because house #3 is well underway and I haven’t even finished posting about house #2. I seriously need more hours in a day. Well, let’s just get right to it and 

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Our master bedroom wasn’t necessarily large and spacious but we found that those weren’t the key elements to obtaining the perfectly functional and relaxing space. With some creative planning, convenient built-in’s and eye catching trim work, the room became pretty perfect! It was actually one of the hardest aspects of the house to part with, aside from all the amazing memories of course!

If you remember from the post on the girls’ room (refer to here if not), the wall between the master bedroom and the girls’ room had been removed by previous owners in an attempt to make a large, more desirable, master. Well, as the post about the girls’ room says, that wall went right back up when we bought the house. Making the room bigger absolutely did NOT make it more desirable. Our idea of a better master bedroom was not to make it larger but instead to incorporate a more convenient closet and it’s own bathroom. This was all part of a planned addition that did not require using up the house’s third bedroom. Besides, we not only needed the third bedroom for Colette (and Mila down the road) but the house was far less valuable as a two bedroom.

After the wall went back up and the floors throughout the house were refinished, we were ready to plan the design for the bedroom. Since this is the master bedroom, I wanted it to feel special and unique without spending a ridiculous amount of money. I knew almost instantly that an accent wall was in this room’s future. I contemplated between a boldly painted wall, using trim or even wallpaper. In the end I felt paint was too boring and wallpaper too extreme. We’ve since worked with wallpaper (you’ll see it in the addition) but at the time we were planning the master bedroom we hadn’t and the fear of the unknown caused me to cross that option off the list for this project. So, as you probably guessed, we went with using trim to make an accent wall! This is the “before” of wall that needed that little extra attention:

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I sketched my design and Pavlo went to town with floor to ceiling panels. The style of the panels was a simplified version of something traditional (much like the wainscoting) so that this room felt updated but not too modern for the age of the house (1930s).

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The entire wall was painted in semigloss white, just like the rest of the trim in the room, and the end result was this beautiful, soft and high-end look. I thought that the white not only made the room sleek and updated, but it also helped to make the room look larger. The other walls of the room were painted in Evening Shadow by Sherwin Williams.
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Of course, the picture above shows more updating that simply a white, trimmed-out accent wall. Curtains (found at HomeGoods) soften the space while wall mounted side lamps brighten it up. The black metal of the lamps and curtain rods provide an eye-catching contrast when mounted on the bright, white accent wall. Then there is the small fact that it’s a completely different bed! Pavlo actually built that headboard (I have a lot of pictures of that process so maybe someday I’ll get around to posting on that too) and we upholstered it adding nail heads and buttons for extra detail.

The wall across from the bed wasn’t neglected of attention either. Pavlo came up with a clever solution to having a television in the room while also adding storage (as opposed to setting the television on a bulky piece of furniture, something this room certainly couldn’t fit). He built an extremely narrow bookshelf around the wall-mounted television. It included built-in speakers, LED cabinet lighting and some amazing bead board salvaged from a historic church.

Start of the built-in.
Start of the built-in.

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Final built in, note the bead board as the backing the top shelves, as well as the lighting.
Final built in, note the bead board as the backing the top shelves, as well as the lighting.
Close up of the shelves with bead boarding from a historic DC church and LED cabinet lighting.
Close up of the shelves with bead boarding from a historic DC church and LED cabinet lighting. The old and new coming together to create something so pretty!

This room set high standards for our next master bedroom! Next I’m writing about the addition we built onto the house giving it a wonderful master suite. No more sharing a bathroom with our kiddos!