Master Bedroom Reveal

You've seen bits and pieces of our master bedroom through our nightstand and headboard posts, and we're finally ready to show you the full reveal!

 

So here it is, our long awaited master bedroom reveal! We chose to keep a light and bright colour palette, similar to the rest of the room's we've made over in our home so far and also keeping in line with our master ensuite.

 

The walls were painted a light grey blue and we stuck with a white, blue, green and grey colour palette. We actually painted the walls after getting some chairs for the bedroom and used the fabric as a jumping off point for colours. We then found the curtains at Ikea on clearance and liked how they grounded the space with a darker teal colour in the same colour family.  Our only mistake, was that this made it very hard to find a fabric for the headboard that incorporated all of these colours. We finally came across this fabric from Tonic Living:

 

Via

 

So that fabric, fortunately for us, had all of the colours in our room in it...and matched pretty perfectly, so it was a no brainer. We used it to upholster our headboard and create a few pillows with the left over fabric.  All we have left at this point is to hang the photos sitting on our nightstands, and maybe to put something above the headboard on the wall. I have a few ideas in mind, but we'll see what we end up with.

 

Before we show you the reveal, lets look back as to how this room looked when we first moved into this house:

 

 

Very red, very yellow and very much not our style. So we pretty much started over. The laminate floors were ripped out and replaced with dark bamboo, the walls were painted, window coverings replaced, light fixtures changed, all door hardware replaced...it was a complete overhaul.

 

So here it is, the master bedroom reveal!

  

You might remember our post on when we re-did this dresser, but if not you can refresh your memory here. The dresser is from Ikea and it was not originally white, so we painted it ourselves in Benjamin Moore "Simply White". All of the trim, doors and baseboards in our house have also been done in "Simply White".

 

We added in a rug from Costco, which we had planned to move to our family room, once the new floors are installed. However, Clover loves the rug and so do we, so if we replace it, the new one will need to be just as cozy! The curtains are from Ikea, and although they look quite blue in the photos, they are actually much more of a teal colour.

Our nightstands were made over with a fresh colour and new knobs. We blogged about that transformation here.

 

 

We get a great deal of light in this room (and the light colours certainly help, but I love how the room always feels light, bright and relaxing.

 

Our vanity chair was also made over in the same colour as our nightstands, you can read about that here, and we love how these pieces nicely fill up this corner of the room. Plus it's a great space for me to use when getting ready if the bathroom's occupied.

 

 

We chose 2 slipper chairs for the space by the window (both from HomeSense) and they became a starting point for the colour palette for this room.

 

 

 

Another few shots of the gorgeous natural light this room gets (and how BLUE they make the curtains appear!).

 

 

Overall, we absolutely love this space. The bedroom, ensuite and closet colours all work perfectly together and we definitely gravitate towards light bright colours. We feel relaxed and happy when coming into this room, and that's most important to us.

 

Many of the projects in this room were purchased second hand and we re-did them ourselves, as well as many of the major aspects:

- Painting the entire space

- Designing the space (as well as the master ensuite which you can read about here and closet which you can read about here)

- Installing the floors

- Painting the dresser

- Creating the headboard

- Painting the vanity table

- Painting and upholstering the vanity chair

- Painting the small table between the side chairs

- Hemming the curtains

 

We truly feel our hardwork has paid off and the change is exactly what we were hoping for:

 

We only have a few things left to do: hang the photos beside the bed, finish up with what we want to do to the wall behind the bed and that's about it!

 

 

We've compiled a source list of everything in our master bedroom. If there is an item we have not listed and you would like to know where we got it please post a comment and we will reply!

 

Dresser- Ikea

Headboard- DIY Project

Headboard Fabric- Tonic Living

Nightstands- HomeSense

Vintage style Telephone- Sears

Picture Frames on Nightstands- Wal-Mart

Lights on Nightstands- HomeSense

Slipper Chairs- HomeSense

Side Table- Second Hand

Picture Frame on side table- Gift from Shannon at Burlap and Lace :)

Small Hydrangea Plant on side table and on nightstand- HomeSense

Vanity Table- Second Hand DIY Project

Vanity Chair- Second Hand DIY Project

Mirror above Vanity Table- Second Hand DIY Project

Plant on Vanity- HomeSense

Light on Vanity- HomeSense

Jewelry box- HomeSense

Bench- HomeSense

Tray on bench- HomeSense

Rug- Costco

Fireplace- Canadian Tire

Vase on Fireplace- HomeSense

Judy- HomeSense

Plant Pot- Ikea

Wooden Box- HomeSense

Bedding- HomeSense

Throw- HomeSense

Pillows- HomeSense

Ceiling Fixture- HomeSense

Mirror above dresser- Sears

Lamp on Dresser- HomeSense

Vase and flower on Dresser- HomeSense

Love sign- gift from our friend Lauren at our wedding :)

Picture Frame on Dresser- Indigo

Curtains- Ikea (clearance)

Curtain Rods- Lowes

Knobs on dresser and nightstands- Home Depot

 

Paint Colours:

Walls: "Reflecting Pool"- ICI/Duluxe Paints

Trim/baseboards: "Simply White"- Benjamin Moore

Dresser and vanity table: "Simply White"- Benjamin Moore

Nightstands/Vanity Chair: "Polar Jade"- Benjamin Moore

 

 

We hope you all enjoy this space as much as we do! Now off to relax :)

 

Melissa and Ian

 

 

Linking up to:

 

Better After

Liz Marie Blog 

Dream Closet- Installation

Our closet system was definitely an excellent investment and fairly easy to install. In my previous closet post, I mentioned that we had chosen the Martha Stewart Closet System for our master bedroom walk in closet. The price was reasonable, but the best part for us was the option of inputting your own measurements into the online design board and allowing the closet to be somewhat custom designed to your liking.

We placed our order for the system and it took about 3 weeks to arrive. When we received the shipment, it came in about 25 boxes- each box contained specific pieces of a certain type, so the pieces were not grouped together, according to how they should be installed.

We chose to assemble the first section (the back wall) in a spare room, and then move the built section into the closet, so we had more space to work with.

The back section was fairly easy to install. The instructions are included and you can also print them from the Martha Stewart website if needed.

We designed the back wall to look like this when finished:

 

After a few hours, the first section had been assembled:

 

 

 

At this point, its just the basic frame, without drawers or shelves, but you get the idea. We then moved the frame into the closet.

 

The closet is designed so that the entire frame hangs from brackets that have been securely screwed into the wall. Once we secured the brackets on the wall, it was just a matter of lifting up the system and placing it onto the brackets. You can see here, how the system basically hangs from those metal brackets.

 

 

 

We then installed the drawers and shelves:

The shelves are adjustable and when designing the closet, we indicated how many shelves we wanted. You can choose more or less, depending on your preferences and can always change around the configuration once its installed.

The drawers can also be modified. We decided on 5 drawers for our system (one additional one that you cannot see in this photo, we added later), however the drawers can also be removed and shelves can be put in their place. The drawers came with metal knobs, but to tie them into the rest of the room (and because I think they're pretty!) I changed them to be the same crystal knobs on our dresser.

The drawers are one of the most costly parts of the system, so if you are trying to keep costs down, I would suggest limiting the amount of drawers you include.

We then put together the left side of the closet in the spare room, which we designed to look like this:

We installed the brackets, moved it into the closet and installed the hanging bars and shelves:

 

The left and right sides of the closet were designed to be mirror images of each other, so after installing the right side, it looked like this:

 

 

So after a few days work, and once our clothes were organized, folded and put back into the closet (my favorite part!) we ended up with the final product:

 

 

Its hard to get a picture of the full view since the closet isn't that large overall, but the system helps to create a perfectly organized closet for us and we are able to fit everything (plus have some extra space) in the closet.

 

To be honest, the closet still looks exactly like this. We don't seem to have any trouble keeping it organized and clean, since there really is space for everything and we think it looks great too.

 

The brackets were the one thing I worried about, but once your clothes are on the shelves, you aren't able to see them at all, so its really not a concern. The drawers slide and open nicely and we are overall very happy with it.

 

We did have a few set-backs and had to rig a few things up ourselves- such as adding a top to the system (which we did by simply buying some melamine pieces, cutting them to size and attaching them to the top of the system), but overall, it was fairly easy to install.

 

So there you have it, dream closet finished! We just designed and ordered the system for another bedroom in our house, so once we have that installed I'll blog about that and let you know if the system went as smoothly the second time around. This time, its not a walk in closet so I'll be able to give you the perspective of designing the system for a standard closet.

 

Have any of you installed this type of closet or something similar? How did it work out for you?

 

Melissa and Ian

 

**The opinions on this system are entirely our own. We were not paid or endorsed to promote the Martha Stewart Closet System.**

 

 

 

Dream Closet- Martha Stewart Closet System

You read what we did to our small closet, but the small closet was peanuts compared to what we did to the walk-in closet. I'll be blogging about its progress in a few separate posts as there is a LOT to write about for this closet!

In our bedroom, we have 2 closets- the walk-in and the small hanging closet. You can read about what we did to our hanging closet here. However, the hanging closet was actually done after we finished the walk-in. The walk in was a major project for us, one that took about 8 months of planning, saving and designing.

When we moved into this house, the walk-in closet had wire hanging shelves that we weren't crazy about. They hadn't been planned out very well, and we found that things fell through them, and it didn't help us to keep the closet as organized as we would have liked. So we started to plan our new closet design.

We first needed to decide what kind of system we planned to install. A custom system was out of the budget (and didn't make sense for the size of this closet), we didn't feel we had the time or expertise to build a closet ourselves, and most of the systems we found did not allow us to input our own measurements. Eventually we came across the Martha Stewart Closet System. We found this system best suited our needs.

The system allowed us to choose from multiple options, to include the actual measurements of our closet and make changes and additions online. The first step we took was to obviously take everything out of the old closet and strip it down to nothing. We then measured the closet and took note of the kinds of storage we needed the most.

We began designing our closet online. We determined that each of us would have one side wall, and we would share the back wall, but wanted to keep the design balanced. So each of the side walls would look the same. Here's how the first side wall (wall A) began:

 

 

We could have added more hanging, more shelving, drawers, etc, but this seemed to be the best option for us. We planned to dedicate the entire back wall to shelving and drawers, so we wanted to include more hanging on the side walls.

 

Wall C, looked the same as Wall A:

 

 

Wall B (the back wall) was then designed as follows:

 

 

When we looked at the plan all together, we had enough shelving for everything we needed, enough hanging storage and drawers to hide things we didn't want visible.

 

Although this system was affordable, it still took us a while to save up for it. After about 8 months, we felt it was time to just go for it. We ordered the system and away we went. In total it took us about 4 days to put together (however, we only did a few hours at a time each day).  

 

We're actually working away on another bedroom in our house right now and once again used this system to design a closet for it...it literally took me about 10 minutes, so easy, and Ian's not too worried about installing it.

 

However, the installation of this closet, wasn't the easiest :S. Stay tuned for our next post about the progress of this closet!

 

Melissa and Ian

 

 

Nightstand Makeover

Part 2 of our dream closet makeover is coming up (as is more progress on the stairs), but I wanted to share this little bedroom makeover with you in the meantime.

A while back I found these perfect nightstands (end tables) for our master bedroom. We have a fairly good sized bedroom and I knew we needed substantial sized pieces for the space.

First we attempted to incorporate these:

Via

The beloved Ikea Hemnes dresser. However, it was too tall and just a bit too large for the space. So back to the store they went.

Then we found these:

Via

 

 

Although we loved them (perfect size, perfect design and they were meant to act as nightstands), they were WAYY out of our budget.

 

So one day I was out shopping with my mom and I came across these:

 

 

 

Perfect size, perfect height and just the right price...plus there were 2 of them. I even factored in the cost if we decided to get them professionally sprayed and they were still within budget- sold. They originally had black hoop knobs on them, but I quickly replaced those with crystal knobs to match the decor in our bedroom.

 

Although they were green, they were not the right shade to match our decor, and we finally decided to give them a makeover.

 

We picked out a colour that we found in our headboard fabric, called "Polar Jade" by Benjamin Moore and it matched the curtains, fabric and all other decor perfectly (its the same shade we re-painted our vanity chair in here):

 

 

 

 

We had each of the nightstands sprayed professionally (we figured it was worth the cost since we didn't spend a ton on the pieces themselves), and they look awesome!

 

Here are the finished pieces:

 

 

 

The colour in the photo looks a lot brighter than it actually is (I would say its truer to the swatch above), however it matches perfectly with our new headboard (which you can see a sneak peak of beside the nightstands). (p.s I really need to replace my childhood alarm clock...yikes!)

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it, our updated nightstands painted to match our space. We love the size of them, the number of drawers and how the style matches our dresser- they fit perfectly. We'll be posting about the finished space soon, but for now this gives you an idea of our colour scheme and how we went about it. Hope this inspires you to think outside of the box for nightstands...there are so many options out there!

 

Melissa and Ian

Wallpapered Closet

Some of you may have seen our sneak peek on our Facebook page of the Wallpapered closet that we finished a few weeks ago, and here's how it all went down.

Ian and I are pretty much able to work together on almost every project in our house. We've done it all- building, painting, designing, etc., but wallpapering has not yet been one of those projects. Although we could have attempted to try this incredibly 'bonding experience' together, we decided to bring in the experts. Call mom.

My mom and I had wallpapered a room in our house together before- the dining room, which we haven't posted about much since that room is still a work in progress, but here's the wall we worked on together:

 

So I knew mom was the perfect person to call when I decided to wallpaper our small bedroom closet. 

 

Our master bedroom has 2 closets (I know awesome eh?!) one walk in and the other just a small hanging closet.  

Its a bit difficult to get a picture of the 2 closets since they face each other and there isn't much room for photo-taking, but here's a picture of the small closet so you can see what we were working with:

That picture also gives you a sneak peek of our Master Bedroom (which I will be posting the reveal of soon!), and shows your our wall colour, so I wanted to choose a paper that went with that.

We didn't need to wallpaper this closet, so this became more of my project...mainly since Ian has never wallpapered and didn't really think we needed to.
I chose to take on this project since a.) it was an easy space to wallpaper, b.) an inexpensive project - since we only needed 2 rolls  c.) if we messed up in the closet no one would probably ever know. Well except you all of course, but I'm sure you wouldn't judge :) So on with the wallpaper!

We chose "Blue Mountain Blue and Silver Strippable Non-Woven Paper Prepasted Wallpaper" that we found at Lowes. Between the 2 papers that my mom and I have worked on in this house, this paper was by far the best. The paper we used in the living room cost more and was much more difficult. The paper from Lowes was easy to install, less expensive and appeared to be good quality. I would definitely recommend this paper.

The first step to wallpaper this closet was to set up the room. I used old sheets and drop cloths to cover the floors and actually taped a drop cloth to the baseboards in the closet (with painters tape), to avoid any drips or anything getting on the floors.

I also 'sized' the walls with wallpaper size. For any of you who have wallpapered before you may know that this step is considered optional, but makes putting up the paper much easier in the end (and easier to take down). This isn't the exact size we used (the one we bought isn't available to view online), but this one from Lowes gives you an example of what the size looks like and does.

The room then began looking like this:

We also made sure to patch any holes in the wall and sand everything down first before sizing.

After measuring and cutting all the pieces first, we put up our first piece:

And after smoothing it out, it looked much better. It took us about 3 hours to finish the closet and in the end, we ended up with this:

 

 

So once again the mother-daughter team did pretty well! (I think we wallpaper pretty well as a team!) When Ian came home, I can honestly say he was very pleasantly surprised.

 

The next step was to build shelving and a hanging rod. Since the other closet in this bedroom (the walk-in, which I will be blogging about next) has tons of shelving and drawers, we decided to dedicate this smaller closet to just hanging.

 

We went to Home Depot and had some melamine particleboard sheets cut to the size of the closet. We then brought home the scrap pieces to use for building support for the shelves. Up first went the side braces:

 

 

 

Then the middle and the other side:

 

 

 

Then we attached the hanging rod to the side braces:

 

 

 

 

placed the wood shelf on top and done!

 

 

Finally time to move our clothes back in:

 

 

So there you have it!

 

This closet has been waiting to be finished for almost a year, but in the end it only took us a weekend to finish it. We now have ALL of our clothes in our bedroom instead of spaced out throughout the upstairs closets (yea!) and its a nice surprise when I open up this closet and see the beautiful wallpaper poking through.

 

Have any of you wallpapered lately?!

 

Melissa and Ian

*The opinions on this post are entirely our own. We were not endorsed by Lowes to recommend any of these products*