finally! our master bedroom
Sheesh, I've been slow with this. That's because it's still not finished, but will it ever be? Probably not. Because it's not even going to be our master bedroom forever - when we extend, we'll be building a new one on the back of the house (yay!) and this will become Zak's. But in the meantime, it's ours. And so here was our plan:
The floors were whitewashed by yours truly and I love them. It was quite the experiment and I will write about it, but there were things I'm going to do differently the second time around, so I'll wait to do Zak's room so I can show you properly. The whole house will eventually be like this and I can't wait.
A word on my diamond light before I go on... Well. I absolutely love it - I planned a
lot of this space around that darn thing - a dark wall, a white cord
with gold fitting (I spraypainted it) so the diamond shape would really
stand out. And after waiting MONTHS to install it (we waited until we
had all the lights installed in the room properly), it blew in less than
three HOURS. How unimpressed was I? NOT AT ALL. And just to annoy me
even more, the store I bought it from just said they didn't stock it
anymore - no offer to replace with something else or refund or even
apologise... And all the publicity I gave them too... Oh well. So I
usually have a normal light bulb in the bedside one, but seeing as I am
rarely in bed reading, I'm just leaving the diamond in for a while -
it's all about look, right? It can look pretty in the daytime! Just not
practical...
Back to the room... The dark grey feature wall became a feature wall after the wallpaper that had been on the wall refused to come off. I probably could have hired a steamer or tried different things on the market, but my patience ran out after a little while of wallpaper removal and I looked at other options. The wallpaper had been painted and so all the removal took the paint off, but not the paper. I gave up when I had an idea to panel it. We decided to try it ourselves and I ordered the pine siding - it came in linear metres (so they just provided enough timber for the amount of metres I needed, but they were random lengths). In the end they weren't random lengths, which was annoying because I could have ordered a few more and just had them all the one perfect length of the room. And they also arrived slightly warped. We assumed it would just kind of straighten on the wall but no. The panels didn't slip into each other as they should so after spending a morning measuring and cutting the panels to fit (we ended up doing a kind of patchwork look) our patience ran out again really quickly (let's blame the baby I'm growing shall we? For Steve too - why not) and Steve decided to cut off the lips of each panel and we just screwed them to the wall (in the studs, obviously) and got on with it.
I wondered how it'd turn out - some of the gaps are pretty big. But after patching some of the joints with wood putty and painting it, I love it. It kind of looks like an old weatherboard wall that we have painted - not a brand new one and I like that. I don't do perfect too well anyway!! We can also see some knots and grain, which is a nice change to the flatness of the white walls. And I LOVE the colour - it's Rhino Grey by British Paints and is a magical colour-changing colour. Sometimes it's grey, sometimes it's a bluey colour, othertimes it looks black. I am thinking it'd make an awesome exterior colour too - we plan to paint the outside dark, so this might be it! Hydrangea is from my garden (I love being able to say that).
I covered my headboard with this herringbone fabric - it's actually a curtain from Spotlight that I grabbed for $10 a metre during a recent sale. It's just pinned at the back and can be easily removed. We're planning to buy a king-sized bed eventually so I'm happy with this for the time being.
Our main bedroom light is this capiz shell chandellier. I've always wanted one of these - I love the tinkle it makes in the breeze - I thought it'd drive me nuts but it is just off centre to the open windows so is in a perfect spot!
Annoyingly, our bed can't be centred against the wall just yet (I moved it over slightly for this picture) because we have dressers and a rack on the left and need some room for Steve to actually walk past! Eventually we will have a built-in and that white chest of drawers will move into Zak's room, but for now, this is how it is.
Steve's side is looking a bit sad at the moment - he has the tree stump at the moment but it looks very lost. I think maybe a crate or rustic stool or something might be better...
Ignore filthy mirror... This chest of drawers has had several lives. It is a temporary addition and holds all my clothes (well, the ones I wear - there is an entire cabin filled with boxes of clothes still that I obviously don't need or wear! Due to a serious lack of storage in the house, we're all just keeping a few faves on high rotation!). The Z is a mini marquee light - I'll post a how-to soon, and the tiny gold vase is one I made and gold-leafed.
I found this brass stork (?) in a charity shop for $5. The bell jar is from Kmart and the books are just a selection of well-read ones topped with the birthday book that has been handed down through my family from my great-grandmother. The white bowl is one I made from clay and gold-leafed the edge.
And just to keep it real - here is the other side of the room. At this moment my sideboard is housing half the bathroom while it's being renovated and the other side of the TV has an assortment of picture frames and washing baskets and Christmas ornaments.... This is our hanging space at the moment - a cheap rack until we get a built-in (in the same spot next to the door).
My "helpers"!
And so that is it - for now! There will be changes and there are still a fair few things to do in this room, but I'm happy to have one room relatively done! And it's a nice preview in terms of colour and floor to to what the rest of the house will eventually look like. And I'm happy with that!
Still to do:
+ Built-in wardrobe
+ Paint the door
+ Replace the window
+ Add curtains
+ Buy a new bed
+ Work out side tables
+ Buy a rug and lamp for Steve
Room sources for those interested...
White walls: Dulux Lexicon quarter strength
Dark wall: British Paints Rhino Grey
Floor: my own concoction - separate post to come
Capiz chandelier: Jezebel Small Capiz Shell Pendant Light, $34, Lighting Illusions
Side pendant: Create 1 Light Pendant in White, $31.95 (on special), Beacon Lighting
Diamond lightbulb: Eric Therner Diamond Lights - try eBay or international stores, I don't think Australia has stockists anymore.
Moroccan side table: local store, but try My Island Home
Ikat cushion: Table Tonic
Headboard fabric: Spotlight
{All images by Belinda Graham for The Happy Home}