Master Bedroom: Move-In to Present

The house tour continues!  Our master bedroom has been "mostly finished" since move-in.  Like the office, we knew we'd be spending a lot of time in the bedroom so it was important to us for to make it comfortable ASAP.   We were aiming for a room that felt calm and luxurious.  Let me tell you, we have come a long way from sleeping on a futon (like we did in the early days of our marriage... until I put a knee through it.... long story).

Steve and I have never had bedroom furniture before.  After the futon, we did upgrade to a queen-size mattress.  It was our first big purchase as a married couple.  For a long time that mattress lived on the floor.  We kept our clothes in mismatched hand-me-down dressers and made do without nightstands.  Then we inherited a very pretty cherry veneer bed frame with two matching nightstands.  We felt so posh!  But after living with those for five years or so, we decided that as long as we were going to move into a new house, we might as well take the plunge and have a real grown-up bedroom, with furniture that matched and a mattress that two tall sleep-thrasers would comfortably fit on.  We drained a large chunk of our savings on a king size bed frame, two nightstands, a tallboy dresser, and a Tempurpedic mattress.  Let me tell you, that mattress is probably the best investment we have ever made.  Worth every last penny.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's what things looked like when we first bought the house.  When we first walked in from the hallway, we were excited about how BIG this room was!  Not that it's huge, but it was bigger than any bedroom we'd had before.  There was a sliding door to the small concrete patio in the backyard (which included a view to the aforementioned McChevron).

Blank slate.

And once we were in the room, we turned and saw this:

His and hers.  Oh yeah!

Steve and I were lucky enough to have a walk-in closet in our last house, but we've learned that walk-in closets mean you have to share space with your spouse, and unless your walk in closet is ginormous, that can be tricky.  His and hers closets meant Steve was excited about never having to trip on my shoes again and I was excited to never see a pile of his clothes on the floor again.  I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you it doesn't exactly work out that way all the time, but it's a lot easier for each of us to camouflage our own mess now than it was when we shared a closet.  I offer this photo as proof.

Hidden mess!

You can see three of the only four upgrades we did to the room itself in this photo.  We painted the walls a soft grey-blue called Rising Tide by Valspar in Sherwin Williams' low VOC Harmony line.  I think it's really pretty with the white base trim.  Steve and his dad installed crown moulding, which made a huge difference in making this room feel upscale.  We replaced the white wooden pulls on the bifolds with oil-rubbed bronze ones.  We also switched out the overhead brass boob light with a less obviously boob-ish one in oil-rubbed bronze.

My closet is on the right.  These closets were chock-full with icky looking coated-wire closet systems when we first bought the house (like pretty much every other closet in the house).  Steve ripped them out and built us a sturdy, more traditional shelf and rod closet system.  I've got a box of keepsakes and a box of off-season and off-size clothes above.  Shoes live below and in a hanging organizer that's hidden behind the right bi-fold.

A peek inside my closet.

Steve's also got keepsakes and off-season clothes in the top of his closet and shoes down below.  His closet is a little emptier than mine because he also has total use of the tallboy dresser in the foreground.

A peek inside Steve's closet.

 Since Steve gets to use the tallboy, I use the two storage drawers in the footboard of the bed.  I wish I had a better camera- it's difficult to capture how regal the furniture looks.  The headboard is sleigh-style.  We lucked out with the color scheme- the bedside lamps are tiffany-style hand-me-downs from Steve's parents in blue that go perfectly with the blue and brown that's already going on in the room.  We are still on the hunt for artwork to live above the headboard.  I have a very specific idea of what I want; I just haven't found it yet.

Comfy.

And then there's my quasi-vanity.  I wanted a place for my jewelry to live that wasn't in the bathroom or on my nightstand.  So I morphed a few different ideas I had seen on Pinterest.  I bought some cheap boxes at Target to hold our socks and my odds and ends like belts.  I spray painted an obnoxiously teal cheap-o mirror with oil-rubbed bronze and used a towel rack with shower curtain hooks to hold my necklaces.  I love that I can see everything easily.  Plus it's pretty.

Vanitatiousness.

 And thus concludes the master bedroom tour!  Only two more spaces to go before we're up to date, everyone- the master bath and the (eeps!) garage.