I have been excited to get started on a plan for the master bedroom since we moved in, but knew I would have my work cut out for me. Our master bedroom is on the second floor of our 1.5 story cape cod which means it’s small with short ceilings, awkward angles and minimal storage. Here is a pic of the room on the day we moved in:
In addition to the undesirable layout, you can see the brown radiating from every corner of the tiny room. You can see in the picture that there was also a start to some bookshelves which were never finished, leaving not usable spaces on two of the walls. To make matters worse, it was lacking access to the attic which we were notified of during our home inspection when we bought the house. Then we discovered a leak near our chimney last summer which damaged the drywall on one whole wall of the room. So to say this space had a lot working against it is an understatement.
I knew before I could even think about the design I needed to remedy these major issues:
- Fix the drywall problem- consisting of removing the wall, re-insulating, re-framing and sheet-rocking
- Create an access panel to the attic, without leaving an obvious hole in the wall
- Come up with a plan for the unfinished bookshelves/awkward wall cubbies
- Paint the walls, ceiling and trim to de-brown the space
This is a lot accomplish with minimal cash to devote to the project. My husband had drywalling experience from high school so we decided to fix the wall ourselves. Had we known what a huge mess and how much work it would be, I’m not sure if we would have made that decision again! We moved out of the bedroom and into the guest room for a few weeks while we ripped out the wall and tackled the drywall. I’ll spare you the details on how to drywall (if you really want to know send me an email) and share some pics from our project under construction.
Water damaged wall after we ripped out the sheet rock. You can also see some paint samples under consideration:
Hole in the wall is the removal of one of the unfinished bookshelves. When we removed this bookshelf we discovered access to the attic and another storage nook!
With minimal space in the room we knew we needed to come up with a solution to keep the useable space behind the old bookshelves accessible. We decided on framing out a small square that could house a computer monitor or TV on the space opposite the bed. Underneath it we would create a fake door to access storage and do the same to conceal the attic entry point.
Here is the space under construction and the taping and mudding in process!
After we addressed the holes I got busy painting. We decided to keep all the walls and angled ceilings the same color to bring the room some more height and paint only the flat ceiling a bright shade of white. I had seen some beautiful grays when flipping through a Martha Stewart magazine and we decided on Bedford Gray from the Martha Stewart paint line at Home Depot. I love this color and it doesn’t have blue undertones which I greatly appreciate. For the ceiling and trim we went with a bright white Tailor’s Chalk, also from Martha Stewart.
Getting the job done.
So, with all of the construction and painting finished, we had a new (and dry) wall, access to the attic and new found storage space.
For now we have a computer monitor in the space but would like to replace with a white flat screen TV for watching news in the mornings.
Here is a view with the door removed, revealing generous storage space behind.
And finally, used the same false door to create and hide an access point to the attic.
Certainly not a finished master bedroom but with the tough stuff out of the way, we are ready to start on a full design plan. We have a solid foundation with fresh new paint color and storage. There is LOTS more to come on this project so stay tuned!
The Suburban Urbanist 