Meet Our New Master Bedroom/Bathroom

You are such good sports with this home tour! Thank you!! :) Thanks for all the house love! :)

Today's transformation is not quite as impressive as the last two days that you saw because we didn't do any demo in this room. But we still love our master bedroom and bathroom sanctuary, so we hope you like it too!

In our old house, our master bedroom was quite different from the one at this house. It was the biggest bedroom in the house, and the only one that could support a king size bed, and that was how it came to be the master. But it did not have a bathroom attached to it {houses weren't structured that way in 1900}, and even though it was the biggest bedroom in the house, it was tiny compared to what we have now.

WHICH LEADS ME to my next point. I am an avid HGTV watcher, and on all the house hunting shows, people complain about "tiny" master bedrooms. Sometimes I stare at what they're seeing and wonder how that equals tiny in their minds. I also wonder why some people need a full size HOUSE for a master bedroom. Don't you just sleep in there? So in that respect, our new master is really huge. Much more space than we actually need. But I can also see that if we were a family with kids, like most families, that space might be nice for a parental hideaway or an office or something. For us, it's just extra space that lets us breathe. And breathing is quite nice.

Before I tell you our thoughts on this room when we moved in, I will show you the before pictures of the master bedroom and master bathroom.

 What we loved about the bedroom included: the massive space {even if it really is more than we need}, the ceiling fan!! {upgrade for us!!}, the vaulted ceilings, the walk-in closet {upgrade for us!}, the wonderful natural light {again}, and the attached bathroom {upgrade for us!}. Oh! And it had carpet! Our old house had hardwood floors in all the bedrooms and we are the only people on planet earth, probably, who don't like hardwoods. Especially in bedrooms. Really the only compromise for us was the bathroom. Ryan, especially, longed for a double sink for us to be able to get ready together in the morning. This bathroom only has a single sink. And I really wanted a jetted tub. This has a normal tub. But there is talk of a real hot tub in our someday future, so that could make up for the plain tub, I think. And anyway, a jetted tub is just a luxury. Not a necessity.

So...wanna see what we did to it?

We started with the paint. In our old bedroom {which we JUST overhauled a year ago}, we had a chair rail and everything above the chair rail was tan and everything below was blue. We didn't want to mess with paying for or installing chair rail, so we elected to leave two walls tan and paint two of them the same blue that we painted the kitchen: Autumn Fog. We loved the way it turned out.

My friend Sandee helped me paint and Ryan did the high parts that took way more ladder height than either Sandee or I wanted to tackle.

Oh! And see that patch there by the ladder in the bottom picture? We took down the mounted box TV they left behind.

I shampooed the carpets. {Did that in every room, but I think this was the only room we documented.}

And then there was the bathroom. The bathroom was, I think, the only room not painted tan. It was painted lavender with a border incredibly well installed circling the top of the room. There was a grab bar beside the tub and a soap/shampoo dispenser glued on the surround. Ryan used a bottle of goo gone and all his super powers to get that out.

The border had to come down first, and it tested my character to its core. My dear friend Amber helped me with part of it, or I might still be working on it.

Actually by the end, I just could not anymore. I had spent 2 days working on the kitchen wallpaper and the bathroom border, and I cannot emphasize ENOUGH how well adhered it all was. Ryan took pity on me and got the part above the light.

Hero. Of. My. Life.

Then it was time to paint. Cheapies that we are, we decided to use paint we'd purchased to repaint a bedroom at our old house. It was called wet pavement and would NEVER have been my choice for a bathroom, but I did not want to buy more paint. Interestingly enough, I ended up loving it in the bathroom.

And then...

...we discovered it was FLAT PAINT. It shows horrible water streaks after we take showers. So we went back to the store and bought a new gallon of paint. Same color, semi-gloss finish. So much for saving money.

Spoiler alert: the new paint has not yet made it onto the walls. And after we "finished" the bathroom, we took down a towel bar, so there's a big mudding patch on one wall. Enjoy it in the after pictures.

 By the way, Ryan says that head lamp was an amazing gift. He uses it ALL THE TIME, and painting was no exception.

I must give Ryan full credit for cleaning the entire bathroom, because cleaning bathrooms that are  not my own 100% creeps me out. It creeps me out enough when it IS my own dirt. But when it's someone else's, I can't. I just can't. So he did the whole thing. Hero of my life AGAIN.

And then it was time to bring in the furniture! I have to show you the day we set up our bed. Ryan had this bed frame at his Greentown house, but we could not get the headboard up the stairs at our old house, so for our whole marriage, it's been in storage at my parents' house. We were excited to bring it back to our beach paradise bedroom!

And now...the after pictures.

And if you need side-by-side comparisons, here you go! {Click to enlarge}

Details about the room: We left the carpet in the bedroom the same and painted two of the four walls Autumn Fog {Valspar, Lowe's}. The other two walls we left the same tan color they were before. We brought in all of our own furniture except the one bookcase, which was left behind by the previous owners {and I LOVE IT!!!}. We also brought our curtains from our old house. There are four panels. Three had been behind our bed as a headboard and one had been at the smaller window in that bedroom. We use all four at this window. We removed the wall cabinet in the bathroom and replaced it with the white on from Ryan's old bathroom. We added the matching freestanding white floor cabinet in the bathroom as well. Shower curtain came from TJ Maxx. We took down the wallpaper border in the bathroom and painted the walls Wet Pavement{Valspar, Lowe's}.

We love our oasis!

There's the towel bar patch I was telling you about! :) And the freestanding cabinet. Since we had to compromise with a one sink bathroom, Ryan gets ready in there {he needs the sink to shave his head and face} and I store all my stuff in this white cabinet and get ready just around the corner in our bedroom at the dresser. After all, I just need a plug-in for my hairdryer and flat iron. So it's ALMOST like getting ready together. And I can watch TV while I get ready! BONUS!!!!

My dresser. It was my Grandma Freelan's, and in our old house, we used just the dresser part without the mirror. It was storage for our hallway then. It's nice to have it all reunited. And I like my flowers!! :) They make me happy.

This hangs above our bed. More vinyl wall art that we couldn't use before. I have an idea to expand this art. This is one of the pictures we remake every year on our anniversary, so I am thinking about printing 4x6 prints of each remake and framing them and building out - a gallery wall of sorts - with each year's remake of this picture. I think it ties in with the saying, don't you?

The bookshelf left behind by the former owners. They had it in the office, but we moved it into here and put all our wedding memorabilia on it. And Albert up top there. He's still alive! A year and a half later! :)

Our monogram: a gift from Lynne Ford.

And I love this corner too. The pitcher and bowl we used to wash each other's feet on our wedding day, along with a framed copy of Ryan's proposal -a gift from Sheryl Glancy, who got to be part of that day!

So that's our little {huge} master! Hope you liked it!

Slow Goodbyes: The Master

If you're running behind on blog posts, you might not know that the last three days of last week, I started "saying goodbye" to our house by reminiscing about the memories of each room. I process in words and tears, and since it's not time for tears yet, I'm going ahead with the words. I want to someday look back on this season and know that I fully appreciated this home and all that it represents. I want no regrets. And for me to have no regrets, there must be words.

Today I focus my goodbye on one of my favorite rooms in this house: our master bedroom. It was the last room we overhauled, and it still feels like a retreat every time I walk in. {Goal: reproduce this feeling in a new house.}

Back when my grandparents lived in this house, our master bedroom was sometimes the room they used as a master and sometimes it was just a spare bedroom. My mom could probably fill me in on all the purposes it served when she was young and lived in these walls. But since I moved in back in 2000, this room has served several functions. {Have you noticed I tend to repurpose entire ROOMS at alarming rates??}

For the four years I shared this home with a roommate {two different roommates, actually, in that span of time}, this room was our combined office space. It was the biggest bedroom in the house and therefore easily lent itself to shared space. This is where I wrote the FIRST book I "published" - not the Advent book, but one I wrote as a Christmas gift for my family and friends the year I had no money to buy gifts. I spent hours bent over my desk in a rather uncomfortable folding chair, pounding out words on a keyboard.

After I had the place to myself, the room rotated between office and guest room and craft room. And then I got the idea to make it my master bedroom. I felt I deserved a proper master with a big girl bed and, well, my secret dream: all things purple.

I knew most guys hated purple, so I figured if I one day got married, my husband wouldn't be wild about a purple room. But since he had not yet arrived on the scene, I could decide to have a purple paradise, and did I ever have a purple paradise. Three shades of purple covered every square inch of that massive room. My dad put up a chair rail and my boss's wife came over to teach me how to measure out and paint thick two-toned stripes on the lower half. I got a king-size bed and made that place my purple sanctuary. Loved that room so much.

I prayed a lot of prayers for Mr. Missing from that bed. I pulled an all-nighter the night of the Kansas tornado, hugging the blankets and watching The Weather Channel report live, trying to catch views of what was left of the town from the piercing camera lights. I read books and journaled, stayed in bed until noon, and sobbed bitter, ugly tears in the desert days. I paced around the bed, got on my face to intercede, and begged God to teach me what I needed to learn.

Then I met and married Ryan, and it became our room. We squeezed in an extra dresser and hung more clothes in the closet, and it became ours. Our little haven. The place where I could wake up every morning and see the face I'd prayed for right next to me.

And as I imagined, he was not wild about the purple. But bless his heart, he put up with it for two and a half years before we finally overhauled it last year into a beach paradise. Goodbye purple. Goodbye stripes. Hello blue and tan. Hello shells and sand. Hello white curtains.

It really does feel like paradise, and I really do have plans to recreate it as best I can in our new place.

It's pretty bare right now, just sporting our lamps and furniture. All our pictures have been packed away, and all the clothes we absolutely do not need in this season have been boxed up. It feels strange to walk into its emptiness, but I am so glad we followed through with recreating this room last year. It was the right decision!

I will miss this room and all the memories made here, but I am looking forward to our new master - one with an even bigger closet and a bathroom attached to it. Beach paradise 2.0 coming soon!!

Introducing...

...our new room!!!

It's true! After two weeks, something to the tune of four gallons of paint, and a lot of inconvenience, the room is DONE. We love it and may not leave it for several days to come. Thought you might like to see the purple-paradise-turned-beach-retreat. Hope you love it too!

Here are the before pics. Yes, three shades of purple, painted nine years ago, pre-husband, when I decided if ever I was going to have a purple room, that was the time.

I did love it, but it was kind of dark {okay, VERY dark} - and I tried so hard NOT to think about all.the.hard.work. that went into those stripes. You know...as we painted over them.

So are you ready for the after?? I can't wait to show you!!!!!

Ta DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Please tell me you love it! {And if you don't - it's okay! WE still love it!!}

We primed. We patched. We painted. We patched some more. And I am pretty proud of us. I think we did it on a great budget.

Here are some of the up close touches.

The frames were ones we already owned. Ryan found white spray paint in the garage, and painted them so they would fit the new beach theme. I haven't changed out the pictures yet...so that was also free. And the S? REALLY cool gift from my best friend. Fits perfectly!

RYAN actually picked out our curtains, and he did a great job. We have curtains at the window and also behind our bed, to serve as a headboard. He found them and they were perfect.

 My amazing new mirror that Ryan gave me for Easter. It reminds me of a bit of driftwood on the wall. Couldn't be more perfect.

We reused all the lamps we already had in there. Ryan spray painted the big picture frame so we could reuse that pics, one of my faves from our wedding. All the other frames were already in the room. I just regrouped them to be together.

The seaglass and starfish art was a gift from my best friend...and the art with the Adirondack chairs was a present from my sister. We had the other two and they all just seemed to fit together!

Ryan picked out the blue pillow, and the little one in front was a shower gift from my sister.

And that...completes our room.

If you don't see us for a couple months, we're taking a nap.

ItzaMonday

I love having Ryan home on the weekends. Doesn't happen all the time, but I love it when it does. This particular weekend, though, wasn't very restful. Fun, but not restful. I fear I may crash for my Sunday afternoon nap about two this afternoon. Gulp.

We like to plan our evenings when we're commuting in the morning. We're just nerds that way. So Friday morning, we enthusiastically planned our evening: pizza, pop and painting. We were going to knock out SO MUCH WORK.

Until we sat on Mo with the pizza and the pop. And then this was pretty much the view for the rest of the night:

So we tried again on Saturday. We got up early and went out for a breakfast date to Cracker Barrel. Ryan skipped the game provided on the table and made his own:

We did a little shopping - partly for us and partly for things we needed in the room overhaul. Found some great deals, and I was happy with that! Then we really really really did come home and get busy.

We had to do a lot of taping...and trim painting...and untaping {is that even a word? It is now!}..and touching up of mistakes. As always, our trusty helper....

Sometimes it can be confusing where the tape actually GOES.

I feel very tall.

A peek at our colors. Oh my word. How we truly love them. And that's good because we are NOT redoing this.

No amount of coaxing could get her to look at the camera. She's such an almost-nine-year-old. But she's cute, so I guess she can be stubborn like that.

So...after our weekend of NO rest, we're happy to report we do have all the painting DONE. The new bedding is purchased and washed and ready to be applied to the bed. The picture frames have been spray painted, which is a cheaper version of buying all new ones. We're ready to reassemble the thing and put the room back together so we can show you the after pics!!

I guarantee you that if I'd been doing this on my own, it would be taking at least a full month. As it is, we're looking at a couple of weeks. But it's been fun to do this thing together. And by together, of course, I mean with the help of Braeya Jo Jo!!