A Master Bedroom, finally

The process of moving, unpacking and settling, all while running a business and getting the kids off to their first week at a new school stalled progress on the bedrooms. However, sleeping on a mattress on the great room floor could only go on so long.  We finally took a couple of afternoons, evenings and a weekend and just focused on our bedroom.

Ready for tape and texture!

We had hung most of the sheetrock before we moved, so I received a crash course in taping, sanding, skim coating, sanding, texturing and sanding.  Did I mention the sanding?  So. Much. Dust.  Sheetrock finishing is my most un-favorite part of home improvement, to date.  It isn't even hard labor, it is just tedious and dirty, the fine white dust from the sheetrock mud gets into everything.  I have, however, pretty much accepted it as a part of my decor for this period of my life.

With the walls finished (and dust wiped, vacuumed and swept), we were ready for paint.  We figured we would bring the sprayer in, tape off the room and just shoot it in one evening.  But as it typically happens in home improvement (and life in general) thinking "this will be so easy" is the universe's cue to throw its head back and laugh maniacally.  Dusty hauled the paint sprayer in that we had just used for another project.  We were using the same Martha Stewart "Chinchilla" color we had used in the boy's room, cut with white paint to lighten it up.  It was late, we had the paint on hand and wanted to get the room done, seldom a wise choice in choosing paint colors.  Dusty set the sprayer up while I masked and taped.  He took one swipe down the wall with the sprayer and it jammed, no big deal, just a little clog.  Hahaha.  2 hours, 3 paint sprayers and many cuss words later our room was still not painted.  Womp, womp, womp.

Plan B.  I rolled the room the next day, all of it that I could reach without stepping foot on the scaffolding.  (side note: I am forbidden from getting on the scaffolding, even if I wanted to.  There is a certain story of me stuck on top of a 13 foot chain link fence in High School that has become not only legendary but synonyms for my overall athletic prowess. I think Dusty is scared he will get a panicked phone call from the top of scaffolding and have to leave work to come save me. His fears are probably accurate).

short arms, tall ceilings

As  much as I love the high ceilings they really stump me in the smaller spaces.  The scale instantly became off when walls were built, (think higher than wider).  To combat this I decided to visually drop the ceiling in our master bedroom by painting the ceiling a darker color and wrapping the color down the wall about 2 feet.  We will eventually hang crown at the paint seam.  I am really happy with the effect, the darker paint helps to ground the ceiling instead of a lighter paint fading into oblivion.  The top color is (surprise) Chinchilla, and I am not happy with it in this room, it is way too blue, but it will have to do for a while, we will probably repaint when we put in our master bathroom to tie the rooms together. 

When painting the walls I knew I was tight on paint but thought my almost 2 gallons would be enough (cue universe laughing again).  I ran out about 3 feet shy of making it all the way around the room.  Being a custom tint we had mixed up I was basically screwed.  At this point I decided the room would never actually be finished.  I walked away for a day or so, the room and I needed a break, and my arms hurt from painting over my head.  While I was busy ignoring the room, Dusty painted the ceiling and top of the walls the dark color.  Eventually, I got my second wind and used the last drops of our custom blend to paint a swatch and took it to Home Depot for a color match.  The room was finally painted.

We considered putting carpet in the bedroom, I prefer to step out of bed and onto carpet over hardwood.  However, I didn't want to spend a ton of money on carpet while the house was still very much under construction (remember the sheetrock dust?).  I picked out cheap carpet to tie us over a few years until we decide everywhere that we want carpet and can do it all at once.  But in the end that seemed very wasteful and silly since the hardwood in our bedroom is the best hardwood in the house, I decided to live with some area rugs for awhile before pulling the trigger on carpet in our room.

Next up was trim, we hemmed and hawed in the trim aisle of several home improvement stores.  Crown molding is expensive.  Especially crown molding that fits the scale of a 13 foot tall room.  We knew we wanted to hold off on base because the closet door will eventually be going away and a new door will go in for the master bathroom, to avoid patching trim we will just do it all when we do the bathroom.  We left stores empty handed several times and went home and slept on our mattress in the living room.  Then we had the brilliant epiphany that crown was not holding up moving into the bedroom.  (I blame paint fumes and exhaustion for our lack of common sense).  We came home and immediately started moving furniture.

When we were deciding on a color scheme for this house I worried that our bed would not go.  We built a home in 2005 that was the complete opposite style of this house.  It was rich mochas and browns, dark wood and bronze, the bed was beautiful in our master bedroom at that house and I was concerned that it wouldn't be as appropriate in this room but was not willing to part with it.  However, when we moved furniture in, it was as if the room was made for the bed.  Even though it was 10 pm as we were moving furniture I dug through boxes in the basement until I found my bedding to make the bed.  This beautiful piece of furniture that I had become rather bored with over the past 5 years suddenly had new life and I fell in love with it all over again.

 We finally had a bedroom fit for sleep, nothing quite like that after a month of sleeping in the living room.  It is far from finished, the floors are a hot mess and there are details to wrap up like trim and lighting but it is on its way.