Since Design*Sponge recently posted a house tour of my place, I thought it would be a good time to share some progress pics so y’all can see how the master bedroom has changed over the course of the last 6 years.
My apartment has one tiny bedroom and one really large bedroom. For 6 years, I voluntarily chose to live in the tiny bedroom and I was perfectly happy there until my boyfriend moved in. 78 square feet is not a lot of space for 2 people to share. Sure, people all over the world live in tight quarters, but for the sake of maintaining peaceful relations with my partner, we decided to migrate to the big room.
It wasn’t until I had to relocate that I realized there was no usable furniture in the tiny room that I could drag to the big room. Everything in the tiny room is custom made and built-in, so that created a “shopportunity” to start from scratch. I don’t really like decorating slowly—contemplating furniture and decor for years on end. I need a designated place for everything in order to not lose my mind, so I prefer to just make a plan and get everything at once. Of course, I made a really thorough mood board, and blogged about what I wanted to buy in this post, which you should definitely check out because there’s also an awesome picture of my mom in it.
Let’s rewind for a minute. The big bedroom has always had good bones. It’s kinda huge (by NYC standards.) It has 2 big windows, a formerly-functional fireplace, and decent looking laminate floors. However before I moved in, there were a few things that REALLY needed to be addressed before I showed off the space to potential roomies. Exhibit A: weird hodgepodge of retro mirrors.
For those of you who have never had the pleasure of ripping mirror off… let me tell you…mirror adhesive is no joke. The only way for me to get these off was to break them. I wore gloves, multiple layers of thick clothing, boots, and safety goggles, then crammed a spackle knife under each mirror until the pressure caused them to crack and hundreds of glass shards went flying across the room. It wasn’t ideal—if anyone knows a better method, please do share. After the mirrors were off, I discovered a little MOLD! I immediately scrubbed the wall with bleach and I haven’t had a problem since. Now, Exhibit B: lots of cracks in the walls and ceiling.
Photos never do a scary room justice. The walls had a lot of lumps, small cracks, and unsanded spackle patches, so I took 3 days to repair those. That was no biggie, just your typical patch/sand/repeat. I also used 2 whole tubes on caulk to fill the cracks around the windows and door trim which was a highly gratifying process. Every crack that disappeared made the room look a couple years younger. The ceilings, however, were a HUGE pain. There were some pretty deep cracks, which I knew would be unappealing to potential roomies. Cracks just make it seem as though rain drops or cockroach poop are going to fall on your in your sleep. I could tell that someone tried to patch the cracks, but they didn’t use mesh tape, so ever the years, the cracks continued to split.
Ceiling repairs are my least favorite home-related thing to do. I hate doing any overhead electrical, anything that requires looking up for hours on end (I’m talking to you, Michelangelo), and I especially hate drilling and sanding ceilings. The process of repairing the cracks was simple: smooth down old spackle, cover cracks in mesh tape, apply more spackle, wait, sand, repeat. Unfortunately, I was dumb and I didn’t have a ladder so I was doing everything on my tiptoes on a chair. I also had no idea at the time that they sell equipment specifically for ceiling sanding. (Such a fool!)
Anyway, the room came together nicely. I rented it to a series of lovely roommates, the last of whom was Katie. I adored this girl so much that when she was out of town, I teamed up with my friend Andrea and we gave her a full-on room makeover while she was out of town (with her blessing, of course.)
I loved her bright and cheery room, but when she left to move in with her boyfriend, she took her bright and cheery furniture and accessories, and the room just looked kind of sad without her. I decided to start over completely and I started by painting the walls Collingwood by Benjamin Moore.
I “wallpapered” the fireplace surround with a curtain and liquid starch. A full tutorial on that process here. I also took down the ceiling fan blades and spray painted them white.
I purchased a bunch of furniture, and shortly after we moved in, the room looked something like this picture above. It was ok but aside from the cool fireplace surround, it was a little bland for my taste. That wall behind the bed needed something, but I didn’t want to clutter it up with junk since there’s so little wall space to begin with. The obvious solution? Accent wall!
I don’t know where I got the idea, but I was feeling experimental, so I decided to paint the wall navy, but rather than stop the navy at the corner, I would bring the line into the room about 18″. It SEEMED like a really cool, hip thing to do.
Except when it was done i HATED it. It’s not that it looked terrible, but when I was laying in bed, it felt like there was a dark cloud hovering over me at all times. It was literally making me depressed. I lived with it for a few days, but it drove me nuts, so repainted the 18″ strip and now all is well. After the navy wall done, it motivated me to finish decorating, so I got some roman shades, a new rug, made a big painting, and now the room looks like this!
For sources, check out my mood board or my Design*Sponge house tour.
