Tag Archives: attic bedroom

Mera’s House: The New Master Bedroom

It’s been a long time coming, but our new master bedroom is done!  If you recall, the room is tiny, full of sloped ceilings, tricky angles, and little eaves.  If you want to revisit the plans and progress for this room you’ll find them here, here, herehere and here, but suffice it to say this has been a slog.  Seeing these before and after shots gives me a proud sense of achievement.  Let’s get into it!

Looking from the doorway into the room, before:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

and after:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Before:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

And after:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Looking back toward the doorway and closet, before:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

and after:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

And finally the closet eave, before:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

And the closet eave, after:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Ahhhhh, so fresh and clean and, best of all, functional!  The closet easily houses both of our wardrobes, and a few of the drawers are even still empty (once this baby makes his debut (in approx. 47 days, not that I’m counting) bring on the fall fashion!).

One of the best things about the closet is the simple brass hardware on the sliding closet doors and drawers.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Red House West || Master Bedroom RevealHere’s the view from the closet looking back toward the bed:

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Those of you who’ve followed these chronicles might remember that I had my heart set on an indigo upholstered bed from Serena and Lily.  I ordered it, and then I waited, and waited, and waited.  Seven months later, the bed still hadn’t arrived, and I started looking for alternatives.  This bed from CB2 appealed to me because of its small size and simple shape.  I posted a plea for input, and that very day I got an email from Serena and Lily saying that the bed was in production and would ship a few days later!  But after getting great feedback from you, dear readers, and after several calls to Katie in which she design and life-coached me, I cancelled the order for the Serena and Lily bed.  The CB2 bed got the rose, and like Trista and Ryan Sutter, I’ve never looked back.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

I’m so glad I went this route.  The Serena and Lily bed is beautiful, but the reality of this room is that with the angled ceiling, the paneling, and all of the nooks and mullioned windows, there is a lot going on in here before you even begin to talk about color.  As it is now, the subtle palette of mostly white and off-white, with touches of peach, indigo, and deep teal green gives it a quiet, restful, and slightly unstudied look that I love.

In its naked form, the CB2 bed was a little too masculine for me so I layered my antique piano shawl over the headboard.  I love the way the inverted triangle mirrors the triangle shaped ceiling above, and that it adds a quiet dash of romance.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Once during this long process I googled “feng shui bedroom” and learned that a bed (1) should never be under a window, (2) should never face a door, and (3) should never be under a sloped ceiling. Check, check, and check.  Despite breaking all the feng shui rules, I find this set up restful and comfortable.  My side of the bed is under the sloped ceiling, and I was worried about hitting my head or having to stoop uncomfortably every time I crawl into bed, but so far, even with pregnancy-induced limited mobility, it hasn’t been a problem at all.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

The bed faces this over-sized mirror and bench.  The mirror isn’t so low that we stare at ourselves from bed, but it’s the perfect height to reflect the view out the window behind our heads.  It gives us the feeling of gazing at the trees and sky, and also functions well as a close-to full-length mirror.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

In the other eave I made a nursing command station.  Eventually I think we’ll build a hinged window seat with storage below for linens, but for the foreseeable future me and my boobs will be right here.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Reveal

So there you have it!  I’ll be sharing more details in upcoming posts, but for now here are sources:

CLOSET AREA
|| sliding door hardware || drawer hardware || ceiling light || rug ||  necklace holder || small triangle mirror ||

BED AREA

|| roman shades || bed || linen sheets (a gift from my mother in law!) || peach linen pillowcases || Catherine of Aragon portrait (a present from Katie!) || peach sky print || bench || round mirror (no longer available in gold) || face planter || peach planter || table lamps (no longer available) || pendant lamp (similar) || wall hooks ||

ROCKING CHAIR AREA

|| chair || pillow ||

An Updated Bedroom Design Plan & A Thank You Note To My House

We’ve hired pros for our new master bedroom remodel, so it is rapidly zooming into focus. The room is going to be done soon, but my decorating “plan” is still just a loosey-goosey collection of ideas.

As a reminder, here is what the room looked like in the raw “before” state:
Red House West || Bedroom Decisions
Red House West || Bedroom Decisions It’s hard to get a clear sense of scale, but just know that the room is tiny. The bed in these photos is a full, and it takes up pretty much the whole room. How to fit a queen bed and a closet for two was the challenge, and after taping out the size of a queen size bed on the floor, going through a whole pad of graph paper, and meeting with our awesome contractor, we’ve got a plan that’s going to work.
The closet is going in this long skinny eave that was housing Chester’s bitty closet and my sewing area:
Red House West || Master Bedroom
I had thought that we would each have a side of the eave as our designated closet, with a mix of drawers and hanging space (see my original closet plan here).  But after monkeying with the design I decided that the simplest solution is best.   The entire left side (where the dresser is in the photo above) will be built in drawers, and the entire right side will be hanging space with sliding doors.  This plan works better because the knee wall on the right side is actually higher than the one on the left (which slopes like a funhouse) so there’s more height for hanging clothes.  Will it be a long closet tube?  Yep.  Will it house both of our wardrobes? I desperately hope so.  Will it be a big improvement on our current closet sitch?  Most definitely.

Here’s a peek (in terribly lit iPhone photos) at what it looks like currently:

IMG_3538 IMG_3539Back to the decorating plan.  You might remember that I was debating between a spool bed and an upholstered bed.   I love spool beds, and I think they look especially sweet in small attic-y rooms, so when I found this I convinced myself it was the one (not in this color though):

The company’s website doesn’t include dimensions, but here’s the description: “The Farmhouse Spool Bed enjoys a vintage look that makes one nostalgic for the relaxed pace of a summer cottage. With its smaller scale, this bed will fit the coziest of bedrooms.”  Perfect!  My bedroom is cozy, I’m nostalgic for a relaxed pace, I enjoy a vintage look!  But when I got the dimensions I learned that what they bill as basically a dollhouse bed is TOO BIG for our bedroom.

Next I found this petite and simple bed at Serena and Lily:

Red House West || Master Bedroom

A totally different look, but I think it’s versatile and simple and, most importantly, it will fit in the room.  I thought I wanted a patterned fabric like the one I shared here, but after ordering fabric swatches I decided on a solid indigo linen.  With the sloped ceilings, paneled walls, and newly revealed wood floors, there’s a lot of pattern and texture in the room already.  I want the room to feel like a cozy and serene retreat for grown ups, so I figured solid was the way to go.  I bought the bed while it was on sale and got an email a few weeks later saying it was going into production, then nothing. For months. Finally in December I called customer service, and after talking to several people learned that my bed hadn’t gone into production because they didn’t actually have enough of the fabric to upholster it. They say they’ll get more in February, and to make it up to me they gave me an additional 40% off, and free shipping! Free furniture shipping to Alaska makes me feel like they’re paying me to buy this thing! I’m not counting my bed chickens before they hatch, but fingers crossed they’ll have enough fabric soon.

Assuming it all works out, I think it will look something like this (click here if you want to see previous plans):

Bedroom Plan Round 3

Finally, you might have heard about (or experienced) the big 7.1 earthquake we had here last weekend.  Nothing was damaged at our house, but the kitchen drawers and cabinets swung open, everything on the walls was akimbo, and a few things fell off the bookshelves.  To my dear darling house, house that survived the 1964 earthquake too, I say thank you.   You’ve earned those janky angles and sloping floors, and I am very grateful that you are strong and solid and keep my family safe.

Mera’s House: Plans For a New Master Bedroom

Our guest room is the one room I didn’t share in the Design*Sponge tour, and there’s a reason for that.  It’s dingy and stuffed with furniture, and long overdue for a little revitalizing.  You may remember that I posted a while back about whether to claim this upstairs bedroom as our own, or to move downstairs into the big room.  The votes came in overwhelmingly in favor of the downstairs room, but we decided on a gradual plan: we’ll make the upstairs room ours for now, and in 7 or 8 years we’ll move down to what is now the playroom.  As part of the plan we’re having a closet built in the playroom that can be used as a home office (having it upstairs didn’t really work for us) that can later be easily converted into a normal closet.  For the foreseeable future we want to be upstairs close to Opal’s room, but as she approaches teenager-dom a little space will probably be welcome, and we’ll move downstairs.

The driving force behind the move to this room from our current bedroom is closet potential.  There is already a small closet in the guest room, which Chester uses because the little closets in our bedroom are full to the gills of my clothes.

Red House West || Master Bedroom

BTDubs, in photos this room always looks yellow, but in reality it is a sweet and mellow peach.

Closet potential is the main impetus for moving to the guest room, and it also has the allure of being bigger than our current bedroom.  That said, the room is not without dilemmas.

Red House West || Master Bedroom Red House West || New Master BedroomRed House West || Master BedroomRed House West || Master Bedroom

The room is definitely dreary, but I think it has a lot of promise.  With so many nooks and crannies, it’s tough to tell from the photos what the shape of the room is so here is a floor plan showing the existing layout:
Red House West || Master Bedroom

The plan is to build a closet that will accommodate both of our clothes in the long eave where Chester’s closet currently is.  The main difficulty is that the ceilings are sloped at a 45 degree angle, meaning that the “walls” are only a little over 3 feet high.  The extreme slope limits our closet design options (there’s no way to have full-height hanging, for example.  My dresses will remain exiled in the hall closet).  Here is my recent effort at sketching out a closet plan:

Red House West || Master Bedroom

Red House West || Master Bedroom

Red House West || Master Bedroom

Because the window at the end of the eave provides much needed light in the room, we won’t have a closet door.  I’m hoping to hang a portiere or textile of some sort across the opening below ceiling height so that we still get the light in the room.  The curtain will probably most often be open, but I’d like the option to close the closet off from view when things get messy.

I want this room to feel pulled together but still lively, grown-up but still eclectic, cozy but also a little luxurious.  Here are some bedrooms that I’m drawing on for inspiration:

See any themes?  White walls, colorful rugs, upholstered headboards, and antique touches.  Looking at these really helps me see how it’s going to come together.

Here is the to-do list:

-Replace the window behind the bed with one in the same style that opens and closes easily;

-Repair drywall and paint everything white, including wood paneling (I think having everything all one color will work best given the profusion of angles and low ceiling);

-Rip up carpet and refinish/patch existing fir floors;

-New light fixtures;

-Design and build closet in eave.

I also really really want to put a skylight into the sloped ceiling above the bed (we wouldn’t have to get up to watch the Perseid meteor shower, which is the only way I’m ever going to see it!) but our contractor has strongly advised against it because of ice damming.  #Alaskaproblems.

I’m really looking forward to having a closet plan finalized so I can start thinking about the fun stuff, like what fantastic textile to use as a closet door.  If you have thoughts about how to design a functional closet with seriously sloped ceilings, this is my earnest plea: please share your ideas in the comments!  I need all the help I can get!