Home Project: Bedroom Makeover, Finally!

We bought our condo in 2011 and did a lot of work right away to make the place feel like a sophisticated grown up home. We took a long time to put the living room together exactly how we wanted it, painted the bathroom and installed a backsplash in there, did a lot of yard work, and added a bunch of fun touches to the guest room.

Our bedroom, however, remained mostly untouched for the better part of the last three years. Instead, we focused our attention, creativity, and funds elsewhere in the house (as you can see from the links above). We’ve been updating a few small things here and there but decided this summer to transform the bedroom, finally!

Here is a recap of all of the big and little changes we’ve made to this room, capturing its’ evolution over the last three years to what it looks like now.

In September 2012 we made our first bedroom purchase – winter bedding! We bought the following at IKEA: the Mysa Ronn down comforter and the Malin Rund duvet cover set. This purchase was a small one (under $100) but it made a huge difference – it brought color and life to a room that was really boring.

We installed lovely faux-wood blinds in the bedroom right when we moved in and left the windows as is until January 2013. I don’t remember now what inspired us then but in January we bought blackout curtains (plus curtain rod) from IKEA. All they needed was a slight hem but otherwise, installation was a breeze.

Kind of a silly picture but here’s the effect of the blackout curtains, open then closed.

Other than those two small updates, the room remained like this for the better part of three years:

Finally in late June 2014 we decided it was time to buy an all matching, grown up bedroom set. Neither of us had ever had one before so this was really exciting! We found exactly what we were looking for at Boston Interiors and walked out feeling confident about our choices – one queen bed frame with storage drawers and two matching dressers. Delivery was going to take two weeks which actually ended up being a good thing since we had some work to do in the room.

The following weekend we ordered a brand new mattress (a Stearns and Foster Cora plush pillow top mattress) from Sleepy’s. We ordered it on June 28, 2014 and had it by June 30, 2014! Super happy with that entire experience.

The delivery guys hauled away our old mattress (which was close to 10 years old!) but since we didn’t have our new bed frame yet, we had to hang on to the box spring for another week. The new bed frame is a platform and doesn’t need a box spring. More on that later.

A new bed called for new bedding, naturally! We went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked up four new pillows, new deep pocket Wamsutta sheets, and extra Wamsutta pillowcases.

Our next step was to paint an accent wall in the bedroom. This year July 4th weekend ended up being rainy and crappy outside – the perfect time to paint! A good call since we’d be cooped up inside anyway and we’d wanted to paint before our new furniture was delivered.

Before getting started with painting we thoroughly read these two articles which were super helpful: This Old House’s How To Paint A Room article and the Young House Love video and guide to cutting in.

We organized our supplies from Home Depot and got to work!

We had already taken everything down off the walls in the room so the first step was to fill all of the nail holes with spackle. We gave it several hours to dry and set which was easy since we bought the kind of spackle that goes on purple and dries white.

Next we used a pole sander to sand down the spackle so the wall was smooth and flat.

The next step was to use a big sponge and a bucket of warm water to wipe down the wall. That way, the wall is clean and smooth, and ready for paint. We let the wall dry overnight and continued the next day.

To prep for painting we put a big plastic drop cloth over the furniture and staged our paint tray and brushes nearby.

As I mentioned, we watched the Young House Love video about cutting in to get the technique down so we didn’t have to tape the wall. I did all of the cutting in and managed to get the outline of the wall done in a little over an hour. John then took over and painted the rest of the wall. The paint color we used was Behr’s Chocolate Coco.

We painted two full coats, letting the paint dry in between, which took 2-3 hours. Here is a view of the paint wet and dry:

When the paint was completely dry we cleaned up and put all of the furniture back. It came out so nice! I had no hesitations about such a dark color but when we saw it all done and dried, we really fell in love with it. It looks so rich and beautiful.

The following weekend, on July 12, 2014, our new bedroom furniture was delivered! Before it arrived though we had to clear out all of the old furniture. The tall dresser went out on the sidewalk, the wide dresser was picked up by my coworker, and the box spring was hurled off the front porch because we couldn’t get it down the front stairs. Amazingly it didn’t break and so we put it in the freecycle pile on the curb along with the dresser and a few other things – and someone took it! (Ew/yay?)

We then put all of our clothes and everything else from the bedroom into the guest room.

We did some last minute cleaning and sweeping before the furniture was delivered.

The delivery guys brought in all of the pieces, set up all of the furniture for us, and even put the mattress on the bed frame.

The rest of the afternoon was spent plugging the TV/cable back in, loading our new dressers with all of our clothes, and putting the new bedding on our bed.

Another great feature of our bed is the two extra cedar storage drawers at the front of the bed frame. It was a little hard to take a picture of but they are quite awesome.

The room is finally done! The rich brown accent wall really brings out the color and texture of our dressers, the platform bed frame takes up so much less space, and moving the dressers to the same wall freed up so much space in the entryway of the room. Overall, the room feels bigger, airier, and so much more luxurious. Having a fully matching bedroom set makes me feel like I’m in an upscale hotel! Kinda sad but really just awesome.

To save you from scrolling, here is the before and after. We are so thrilled with how it turned out. We need to hang some new art eventually and maybe add a sitting chair near the door, but we’re in no rush. The room finally feels complete!