Master bedroom makeover plans

We’re already down to just one more week yet in January. It’s definitely time to get moving on the first project on this year’s Home Goals list: the master bedroom makeover. You saw the inspiration picture last week in my Home Goals post.

Black, white and gold bedroom

Source: Chez V (found via Little Black Door)

You also saw the fancy-schmancy room we’re going to be using as our master.

Master bedroom before

So there’s just a little bit of work to do to transform this former guest room into a truly fancy master bedroom:

  • Buy a queen size bed – Matt and I have slept on a double ever since we first moved in together. The mattress was my old bed from my grandma’s cottage. It was on its second life when it went up to the cottage, never mind when it came to our first house. We were truly due for an upgrade. In the middle of shopping for a new mattress, we decided to really upgrade and went for a king size. Those extra six inches in the fancy master will come in handy.
  • Remove popcorn ceiling – Scraping the ceiling was not the funnest way to spend a day, but the popcorn is gone and so are all of the cobwebs that were stuck to the stipple.
  • Patch ceiling and walls – Also known as, “how I spent my Christmas vacation.” Patching took such a long time.
  • Paint ceiling, trim and walls – I had such a hard time picking a colour. Finally, I found Chez V’s makeover, which made me decide to go dark and dramatic. Trendy blogger favourite Hale Navy it is.
  • DIY a headboard – No idea what I’m going to do here. White? Wood? Upholstered?
  • Relocate light switch – Oddly, the light switch is behind the door. It’s perfectly positioned if you used the mirrored pocket door from the other bedroom to enter the master. I wouldn’t really call this feature fancy. It’s just weird.

Light switches behind the door

  • Replace light fixture – Anything’s better than the ceiling fan that was there before. I like the brass and crystal in the inspiration picture.
  • Make/find window treatments – We haven’t had curtains since we moved in. We don’t need them for privacy, but it would be nice to sleep in past dawn some summer weekend.
  • Paint dresser and replace hardware – We have a beat up black dresser that we bought at a garage sale. I think it can be freshened up with some nice white paint and brass hardware.
  • Refresh dinged up closet doors – It appears our closet doors spent their past life as bulletin boards, except with tape rather than pushpins.

Beat up closet doors

  • Decorate and personalize – It will be nice to finally personalize a bedroom. Although the giant pink ape you saw above probably isn’t the personalization I’m looking for.

Someday, when we do our major house renovation, we will build a beautiful master suite. At that point, there will be no mistake as to what bedroom is the master. Until then, this makeover will give us a nice–and a little bit fancy–space of our own. I’m not quite sure yet where the ape is going to end up sleeping.

Not quite masters of our universe

It turns out Matt and I have been sleeping in the wrong room ever since we moved to the farm. We’re the owners of this farm, the adults of the house. That means our room should be the master bedroom, right?

Well, we got it wrong when we moved into the farm.

We did nothing to fix up any of the bedrooms. The paint colour is gross and walls are dirty. The ceilings are stippled so that cobwebs and dust get caught on the pimples (no, I’m not the greatest housekeeper). The light fixtures are massive outdated ceiling fans. In the midst of all of this beauty, we just picked a room, plopped down our furniture and called it our bedroom.

Unbeknownst to us, the room across the hall (which we’ve been using as a guest room) was where we should have plopped down our furniture.

Why, you ask? Well it’s obvious. This is the fancy room.

Master bedroom before

Now looking at this picture, you may still feel the need to question what makes it fancy (aside from the giant pink ape, obviously).

Let me enlighten you.

This room has special moldings. All through the rest of the house, the trim is basic, narrow and flat. But this room has the fancy curvy trim. Just ignore the fact that screws for the window blinds have destroyed some of it.

Molding with screw holes in it

This room even has crown molding! Oooh, fancy.

Crown molding

This room also has a mirror, which our current room lacks. The fact that it’s a full-length mirrored pocket door that accesses the small bedroom next door (my “office”) isn’t weird at all.

Mirrored pocket door

This room has drywall, while the room we chose as our bedroom has painted faux wood paneling. Nothin’ says fancy like drywall.

And most of all, this bedroom is bigger… by a whole six inches. Woo-hoo!

So it’s obvious. Matt and I have to move across the hall.

Sarcasm aside, I’m actually looking forward to the move. This is my chance to make a comfortable, relaxing, personal, pretty bedroom for Matt and myself.

Next week, I’ll share how I plan to do that.

Operation popcorn

You know those things that you have to do, want to do, but don’t really want to do? That’s this month’s project.

The plan is to start our master bedroom makeover. Step one is remove the popcorn ceiling (the fan’s on the list too).

Popcorn ceiling

I’ve been saving this project until I could open the windows, as there is likely to be a bit of dust and mess.

What are you up to this July? Do you have any tips for removing stippled ceilings? In the basement, I scraped some and sanded others. Sanding’s way messier, but I got a nice smooth finish and had to do less patching.