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!

Meet Our New Living Room

Thank you so much for all the very kind words you offered yesterday about our kitchen reveal! You made us smile! :)

Today I want to introduce you to our new living room! Our living room at our old house was pretty small. It was long and narrow, which made it delightfully cozy, but somewhat of a nightmare for large furniture. That's why we ended up getting Mo {our couch}: he made it possible to add seating without adding a whole new piece.

I think we about doubled our space with our new living room, and while our original plan had been to include our dining room table in this space, we nixed that idea to make it a little bit more open and comfortable. We learned, though, on Mother's Day that by moving just one chair, we have plenty of room to add long tables and mostly-comfortably seat a dozen or more people.

Here was the living room as a blank canvas on our first day:

We both adored the vaulted ceilings, the abundant natural light, and all the space. We noticed those things right away when we toured the home! Our old living room only had one window and it wasn't even a true "picture window" so the whole natural light thing didn't happen there. I've been SO HAPPY with picture taking in this house because of the lighting!

The house has pretty new carpet and while it is really light {almost white, actually} and not quite what we were used to at our old place, it wasn't worth it to us to replace it because it's still in really good shape and it's neutral. All the walls were tan again, which I liked, but I needed a little contrast somewhere. And so we got busy overhauling this room.

In the second picture above, you see "the wall." The one that came down to open up the space to the kitchen. And no. We don't normally have a tripod sitting in the hallway. HA!

Here are some pictures from the room in progress:

You might have to enlarge the picture to see it, but there's a big #DEMODAY written on that wall. Oh, I love my Chip Gaines Junior!

Ten million points to the guys for tripod-ing all those shots since I wasn't there to document.

 We decided to keep the two vaulted walls the same tan color they were when we moved in, but we painted the little wall the same milk chocolate that we had painted the bathrooms at our old house. It gave some depth to the room without making it too dark.

It was kind of a mess in there at that time. Living room/workshop.

For the other wall, we did the stone feature I'd found on Pinterest. It's called AirStone, and it's a faux stone that you adhere to the wall. It's not heavy, so it doesn't weigh down the wall. It doesn't require grout. It does require a lot of patience. {Here is the post on how that process worked.} Ryan worked for over a week on this wall and it turned out STUNNING.

 This wall took so much work, but the end results were AMAZING.

I present:

And again, if you need side by side comparisons, here you go. Click to enlarge.

I'm even amazed by the transformation in the second one, and I live here!

So a recap of what we did...We left the carpeting alone and the paint on the two vaulted ceilings stayed. We painted one wall Milk Chocolate {Valspar, Lowe's} and put up new curtains. The curtains at the small window actually came from the living room window at our old house. The curtain on the other window, we purchased from Amazon to cover up the vertical blinds. {Vertical blinds bug me, but they're up and we paid for them with the house, so I just cover them and move on.} We tore down half the wall that led into the kitchen and put up the AirStone treatement, along with a counter that passes through to the kitchen. We moved in the furniture we already had - nothing new - and called it done!

We adore our living room. Seriously adore it. We also adore having ALL our living room furniture in one place. We could not do that at our old house. Big, comfy couches for people to hang out and kids to play when they come over. Lots of space for working out and for throwing in a couple of tables to feed the masses. Easy conversation between the two rooms and much, much light.

{Funny story: the night the wall came down, the former owners came over to drop off some things they meant to leave behind. They walked in, stared at the opening, and said, "We never thought of that." LOL!! I think they liked it!}

We put the clock on the stone wall and now we call that our clock tower. LOL! It feels very regal.

That wonderful, heavy counter top. It has worked so well, both in our everyday life and in what we've observed so far of our entertaining life. We love it.

We bought this wall saying a long time ago and have always wanted to hang it up, but the walls in our old house were textured and couldn't support vinyl wall letters. So this was our first chance to use it and we love it! Our little family of two. :)

Ahhhh, our comfy seating area. We seriously love it. Have I mentioned that?

So that's a tour of our living room! More rooms to come!