When we first moved into our home in 2008, my husband worked a night shift. Although I wanted our bedroom to look nice, I never saw it as a sanctuary. Our primary concern when painting was to create a space that allowed him to sleep during the day. At that time, a blue & brown colour combination was a thing. We opted to paint 3 walls chocolate brown and one a powder blue colour. The curtains we chose were room darkening to assist with his daytime sleep schedule. Neither of us ever spent time in our room. It was basically a sleep room. In fact, it often seemed like making the bed was a dumb idea. I would get up for work just as Tim was getting home and settling into bed and vice versa at the end of the day. And so, for 12 years, our room was a a dark dungeon-like room. Although it may not appear dark, you must keep in mind that the curtains were rarely opened because of Tim’s work schedule. I scoured my archives for before photos and this is all I could come up with. These shots show the powder blue wall, but only a glimpse of the chocolate brown walls. When Tim finally got a day shift in May of 2019, a bedroom makeover seemed appropriate.

I spent several months pondering what I wanted the new space to look like. I knew that I wanted our room to be super bright with an aura of “lightness”. In addition to wanting to paint and transform the space, we had both been complaining about restless sleeps for months. We thought that the solution might be a new king sized bed. We currently have a queen, but in all honesty, it seems cramped, especially with our dog, Hershey, in bed with us every night! I am a hot sleeper and between the “heat” and the dog, I felt like I spent most of the night thrashing around and Tim felt like he spent most of the night responding to the after shocks of my thrashing. Neither of us were sleeping well! 🤪

I finally came up with a plan. Although we weren’t really ready to purchase a King size bed yet, we knew that we would need a custom platform bed to accommodate the space in our room. The head of the bed would need to fit in the alcove between the two existing closets and although a king mattress would fit, it would be tight and Tim would need to build the bed to make it work. We decided to go ahead with the room design and build the platform and then we could just place our queen on the new platform until we decided to purchase a king mattress. And so the transformation began to unfold….

Step 1: Feature Wall Installation

For many years now, I longed to transform our little alcove at the head of the bed. I envisioned a feature wall and custom lighting. One of the cool things about our 1921 unfinished basement is that at some point many decades ago, some walls were put up and they were built using….wait for it…wait for it….shiplap!! Yay! I always knew that at some point we would either reclaim and use the wood elsewhere in the house or incorporate it into our someday finished basement design. It just so happened that we removed a wall a few years ago and of course, kept all of the old shiplap. Tim measured it all out and began to construct the “puzzle” of shiplap pieces. Here is the picture of the shiplap wall pre-painting. (I actually like the randomness of the pieces and finishes, but it wasn’t the look I was going for in this space.) This also gives you a peak at the new navy wall paint.

Step 2: Priming and Painting

Of course, we knew this would not be a quick and easy paint job because we were covering the 3 existing chocolate brown walls with white! The light blue wall was going to be a combination of white and navy blue. We ended up priming everything….including the ceiling which we had painted light blue as well…Why? I don’t know. That was sure a pain to prime and paint. So, with one coat of primer and 3 coats of paint….the room began to take on a whole new look!

Stay tuned for more master bedroom projects and photos!