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- 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

 

 

Chair Update

Remember our vanity chair that we made over a whiiiiile back?

It started out looking like this:

 

 

and we made it over to look like this:

 

 

 

Well, we loved how that chair turned out, but once we got our headboard fabric something had to change. After searching for months for our headboard fabric, we figured it was probably easier to change the chair. So we did.

 

First we had it sprayed a different colour. We chose "Polar Jade" by Benjamin Moore:

 

 

 

The first time around I painted the chair by hand and was really happy with the paint and the results. This time, we decided to get it professionally sprayed. We figured since we were getting the nightstands done, that we might as well do the chair at the same time to save us money on buying a can of paint and the time. We didn't need to prime the chair since it had already been painted. The painter just gave it a light sanding and then it was sprayed. This colour worked perfect with our drapes, new headboard fabric and nightstands (which we had had sprayed in the same colour...post on that coming soon).

 

After spraying the chair, we reupholstered it with what we had leftover from our headboard fabric, "Fleur, Summer" from Tonic Living:

 

 

and soon we ended up with a chair that matched everything perfectly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chair actually looks a lot brighter in the pictures than it actually is. The colour is actually closer to the colour of the drapes which works perfectly.

 

So there you go. A quick and easy makeover that didn't break the bank.

 

Costs:

 

Chair- already owned (so FREE! kinda?!)

Paint and spraying- $60.00 Polar Jade by Benjamin Moore

Fabric- leftover from our headboard fabric (Fleur Summer from Tonic Living) (also free since we already had it)

 

Total cost: $60.00.

Woot!

 

Im thinking of adding some"bling" nailhead trim around the seat base where the fabric meets the chair...what do you think?!

 

Melissa and Ian

 

Staircase Overhaul...Part 3

After we had the railings and posts painted, the next step of the process was to get the treads put on. We had hired a stair builder to do this for us- they came and measured each of the current stairs in order to build the treads to size and then gave us a sample of the stain to make sure it matched our current hardwood floors.

We were pretty happy with the sample stain, but the hardest part of this decision was which wood to choose. Do we go with maple or oak? We actually have dark bamboo hardwood in many of the rooms in our house (those that aren't tiled) and wanted to make sure the stair treads matched up with that. We originally thought maple, as the look of maple wood (very little grain) is more comparable to the bamboo, however the railing for our stairs is oak. So oak it is! We figured we should keep consistency within the stairs and keeping it all oak was the best way to do this.

So we crossed our fingers, met the guys on the day they arrived with the treads, went to work and prayed that we wouldn't come home to the biggest mistake we'd ever made.

We left our stairs in the morning looking like this:

 

and came home to this:

 

 

Phew! The treads looked fabulous. The stain on the oak is so dark, that its hard to see a lot of the grain (which works well with the bamboo) and the stain colour is pretty much a perfect match. HUGE sigh of relief!

 

However, we were met with a few new challenges. Notice the difference in the end posts on the railings?

 

 

We had talked about cutting off the end of the bottom stair so that it didn't round out, and wanted the railing made into a straight line to the bottom. In doing that, the stair builders had to cut the railing fairly short to deal with the curve at the end, and this resulted in the end post being mounted higher up than we had hoped. Whomp whomp.

 

You may have also noticed the gap of tile that now exists beside the bottom stair. We did think of this before and have extra tile lying around, so we'll be able to fill that hole up. One day we would LOVE to replace these floors (not really our style), but thats a huge (and expensive!) undertaking since these floors carry through our entire main floor into the kitchen. One day...one day.

We also found that the bottom post itself was no longer substantial to hold the weight of the stairs (not literally of course), but it no longer looked large enough. Strike 2.

So the best way to resolve this? Build up the bottom post. This also poses the problem, that we need to build up the 2 posts at the top of the staircase as well....hmmmm...so we're in the process of working on this.

Issue #2- railing colour does NOT match with the treads. Sigh. Our last post filled you in on how much time we spent trying to find the darkest brown paint we could...and apparently its not dark enough! So now, we need to get the railings all repainted...ONCE we find a darker brown or colour match something else that we have that is a very dark SOLID brown colour.

So there you have it. I truly feel that these stairs will look great once we get everything right...its just taking longer than we anticipated. Go figure.

We've still come a long way so far...

I also wanted to mention that the walls will all be painted (the current colours are the choices of the previous homeowners) and the hallway light fixtures replaced (not exactly our style), so a lot more work to do!

The staircase saga continues...

Melissa and Ian

DIY Headboard

Hi Everyone,

So we've been posting about our staircase overhaul lately, and wanted to take a bit of a break from that to tell you about one of the many other projects we've been working on.

In the midst of the dust, paint and everything else going on around here, we had a headboard sitting around for months that we had been meaning to upholster. Honestly I think anyone who has been to our house in the last year and come upstairs, has seen that wooden headboard sitting in one of our spare rooms just waiting to be madeover.

The main reason why it took us so long, was because we were waiting for just the right fabric to come along. Designer rule #1, always pick your fabrics first and design your room around them. Well, we may have gone against that rule with this room. We found some chairs that we loved, used the fabric on those chairs to pick our paint colours and everything else for the room, however this made it difficult when we needed to pick a headboard fabric. We wanted this fabric to tie everything together- the paint colours, drapes, furniture, floors, etc. Yes, we know that was expecting a lot, but guess what?! We found it! One day we were checking out the Tonic Living site for some fabric for another project and came across this fabric: "Fleur, Summer":

 

This fabric perfectly combined the teals, whites, greys and brown in our floors together.

 

So we started with a plain wood headboard, which I thought I had taken a picture of to start, but apparently did not (oops!). We bought the headboard off Kijiji thinking we would paint it if the upholstering didn't work out, since we liked the shape of it.

 

Once we found the fabric, it was actually a lot easier to do that we thought.

 

Here is a list of supplies that you'll need:

 

- Old headboard OR piece of plywood cut to the shape and size you want

- Fabric (we bought 3 yards just in case, but only really used 2 and a bit)

- 2 inch thick foam (enough to cover your headboard plus a bit of extra)

- Batting (enough to cover your headboard)

- Hammer

- Spray glue

- Staple gun

- Marker or pen

- Utility knife and scissors

- Dust mask

- Iron

- Optional: Nailhead trim- we got ours from Lee Valley Tools here

- Mounting hardware

 

The first step you want to take, is to iron your fabric and set it aside. You want to make sure its wrinkle free when you place it on the headboard for attaching.

 

I would then suggest placing your foam on the floor and tracing out the shape of your headboard onto it. Then cut out your foam shape and trace the shape again, but move in 2 inches from the edge all the way around. So the shape you end up with, will give you a boarder of 2 inches all the way. This is really only necessary if you plan on adding the nailhead detail. If you're not adding that, then skip the second part of this step.

 

You then want to spray the foam with the glue (use a mask) and attach the foam to your headboard.

 

Place your batting on the floor and set the headboard on top (face down). You now want to stretch the batting all the way around and staple it tight. Make sure you pull it around to the back and staple into the back of the headboard all the way around. Cut any excess batting from the back of the headboard.

 

Next step is to carefully set your fabric on the floor face down (make sure its clean first!) and then set your headboard on top, again face down. Staple your fabric onto the headboard again pulling it tight as you go all the way around. Cut away any of the excess fabric and use a glue gun to glue any other excess fabric to the back of the headboard.

 

Lastly you will want to attach your nailhead trim (if doing so). Simply place the trim on the headboard and use the edge of your foam as your guide (you will feel it through the fabric and there will be a noticeable space where you edge your trim up against). The way it works, is that every 5th nail or so, they provide you with a tack you will actually have to hammer in, so you will not need to hammer in each and every nail.

 

You're done! You'll want to mount your headboard to the wall using whichever method your prefer (brackets, etc), but make sure the hardware you use can support the weight of your headboard. We chose to use the OOK Hangman 200 lb. French Cleat Picture Hanger from Home Depot, which worked out really well for us.

 

We found this tutorial from The Marilyn Denis Show really helpful as well.

 

Here is our finished product:

 

 

 

The nailhead trim turned out a lot better than I expected it to:

 

 

 

We also chose to mount it slight up from the top of the bed, based on the height of the headboard itself:

 

 

We also wanted to make sure the top of the headboard was close to the same height as our bedside table lamps:

For us, this seemed to be a good height for the room and wasn't too far up from the top of the bed. Plus, its not noticable from the front, once the pillows are on the bed and everything is all made up.

We're really happy with how it turned out and think it really helps to finish off the bed in this space:

And a sneak peek of the headboard in our finished bedroom (which we'll also be posting about soon!)

 

Here's the cost breakdown:

 

Costs:

 

Solid wood headboard: $50.00 (purchased from Kijiji)

Fabric: $60 (3 yards purchased at $30/yard, but only 2 yards used)

Nailhead trim: $15 (4 bags at $5.00 each, only used 3)

Foam: $10.00

Batting: Had on hand (free!)

Mounting Hardware: $15.00

 

Total Cost: $150.00 (approx)

 

Definitely a cost savings in our books...since most of the headboards we've seen have been at least $200+. You could still cost costs by using a piece of plywood or wood on hand, going with a less expensive fabric and cutting out the nailhead detail if you choose.

 

Sources:

 

Headboard: Kijiji

Fabric: Tonic Living

Nailhead trim: Lee Valley Tools

Foam: Len's Mills Stores

Batting: my mom's closet :)

Mounting Hardware: Home Depot

 

 

Have any of you upholstered anything lately? Have you used nailhead trim? If so, we'd love to hear how it worked out for you! Its almost Friday everyone! Happy weekend :)

 

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul...Part 2

 

Bring in the painter! In continuing our staircase overhaul saga once we had ripped out the carpet, staples and cleaned the floors, the next step was to bring in our painter. If you missed the first part of our staircase project, you can read that here. Since we were working with a special paint and really didn't want to mess this up, we figured it was best to bring in the pro's.

 

Our plan was to paint the posts and railings, since they had already been previous stained and we didn't want to go through the work of stripping, sanding and staining them. So we went on a search to find the darkest brown colour we could find. We wanted the stair treads, railing and posts to all be a dark brown (the same colour as our wood floors), but it was almost impossible to find a perfect brown colour to match. We actually went to 3 different stores for paint chips and ended up going with Behr "Bitter Chocolate"- the darkest we could find without going black:

 

 

 

Here are the railings and end posts painted with the dark brown and all of the small posts re-painted white (we use "Simply White" by Benjamin Moore for all of the white paint in our home) : 

 

 

You can see in this picture, the section of curved railing is the original stain colour and the post has been painted with the dark brown. This was done as we decided to get rid of this curve in the staircase and straighten the bump at the base of the stairs. The plan was to cut part of the railing out and straighten it, so we didn't need that one section painted:

 

 

Once the paint was on the railings we thought it matched fairly well with the floors...until the treads were put on. Once we treads were put on, the railings and posts looked much too light, and we didn't like the contrast of the painted areas with the stained areas. As well, the brown paint was not dark enough. I would recommend either going with a black paint or getting something colour matched if you have that option. We wanted to do a colour match, but they were unable to colour match to a piece of stained wood (the wood grain has too many variations of colours in it and the system would not pick it up properly) so we had to go with a premixed colour.

Back to square one. We are now debating on stripping, sanding and staining the railings (using a tester piece of wood elsewhere in our house) and seeing how they react.

Oh and I also forgot to mention we weren't happy with the post either. Once the railing was cut and straightened it looked fine, however the end post itself is not substantial enough. We are now thinking of replacing it, or finding a way to build up the post to make it larger.

So this project took a couple of unexpected turns. Its going to be more work than we were anticipating, but once its complete I think it will look great and totally change the look of our entrance.

Expect many more posts to come on the progress of these stairs!

Melissa and Ian

Staircase Overhaul

We decided to redo the staircase.

 

It wasn't that we didn't like the function of it, but we are slowly updating this house one room at a time and the staircase was one of those things that constantly kept nagging at us to change it

 

We knew we didn't want the carpet on it anymore, so we decided to take a risk and rip the carpet off, hoping there could POSSIBLY be nice wood treads underneath. Then we would simply stain them and all would be right in the world. Nope plywood. So we knew we needed to stick with full carpeting of the stairs or go for the overhaul. We went for the overhaul. Not without a ton of planning and inspiration pics of course.

 

Here are a few that inspired us (all of which you can find on our Pinterest here, and one that we actually posted to our Facebook page yesterday):

                              Via:  Contemporary Staircase by Cambridge Architect LDa Architecture & Interiors

Via

 

 

 

Via

and the image that has inspired the overall look that we want for our hallway:

 Via

 

So, after seeing all these beauties we couldn't really keep the carpet. One day after work I came home and the carpet was pretty much gone. Ian went to town and ripped it up, staples and all...well most of the staples. Him and I spent another 4 hours one night taking out ALLLL of the staples on these stairs. I can honestly say, there could have been a tornado that destroyed our entire home and that carpet still would have been firmly attached to those stairs there were so many staples.

 

After the staple removing party, we ended up with this:

  

 

And if you didn't see it on our Facebook page, here was the before:

So we're in it now! Carpet is gone, and there's a lot to do to get these beauties made-over. We've actually come quite far this week, and we're almost finished (with a few set-backs of course), but we'll share the next phase of this project with in our next post.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Melissa and Ian