It’s been a long time coming, but we have finally finished our bedroom for home improvement and are able to share it with you! When we moved in, our bedroom was dingy, dark and depressing. It also came complete with a very small en-suite bathroom that not only took up half the room, but was barely useable. Over a year later, a ripped out bathroom, floorboard restoration, lots of paint and organisation, we have finally finished. It makes me so happy to spend time in this room, to cuddle up in bed with Alex and Roxie, to read a book with a cup of coffee in the morning, and to choose my outfit from our new open wardrobe. You can watch the full transformation video linked at the bottom of this blog post to watch the entire makeover process, but like I did for our bathroom, I wanted to write the details down in a blog post for you to see! All the items available online are linked at the bottom of this blog post.
Let’s go back to the start. The room had no warmth, character or personality. Like a lot of the rooms in the house, it had been a long time since these rooms had seen much love. From the magnolia crusty paint, to the muddy-coloured carpets and tatty doors, it needed some TLC. As I touched on above, there was a pretty bad en-suite in the master bedroom when we moved in. It was very small and came with a charming saniflo toilet, shower that you could barely lift your arms in, a sink so small it was a struggle to wash your hands or clean your teeth, and a door that touched your knees when doing your business. It had to go. Not only would we gain more space in our master bedroom, but we’d also gain a full sized bathroom upstairs. It was definitely the best decision, and we couldn’t be happier when we saw it being ripped out.
Once the bathroom was gone (see video below), we gained a much clearer picture of the space. It immediately felt bigger and we could start to have a vision for the room. Early on we had all the windows in the house changed and sash windows installed, and this made a huge difference to the feel of the house, including this bedroom. We learned from the windows the worth of spending some money to bring this cottage back to life, so we also decided to splash the cash to restore the floorboards hidden underneath the carpets. While we had less success in some of the other rooms upstairs (see our floorboard makeover video linked below for all of the drama), the master bedroom had stunning Victorian floorboards that were able to be brought back to life. I have always dreamed of having original floorboards in my home, so this was one of the most exciting discoveries and makeovers so far during our renovation process.
After giving it a go in the spare bedroom on our own by hiring a sander, we learned from our mistakes to hire professionals to complete the job. As I mentioned the floorboards in this room were salvageable; instead of (potentially) original to the house and close to 400 years old and ridden with lots of woodworm (like they were in the spare bedroom and bathroom), these were Victorian and therefore in much better condition. The guys did a great job cleaning them up and polishing them to their former glory. The warm pine was a starting point for so many decorating decisions later on, and my dreams for floorboards in my bedroom had been fulfilled.
The next big job was the paint the room, the door and the skirting. I love a calm and bright bedroom, so we kept it simple and went for an off white paint for the walls (White Mist by Dulux). It took a little longer to finish than usual, mainly due to the large area of plaster left over from removing the bathroom. It took many layers and many hours, but once finished, the room was a beautiful blank canvas for us to work on. The white paint made the floorboards and windows stand out, and brought so much light into the room. I couldn’t quite believe how much brighter this room was once we painted it (the first before and after photos in this post show this perfectly).
