Where the heck have I been? Well, most of you know that we moved back in July. While we hoped buying this house would be less DIY and more R-E-L-A-X-A-T-I-O-N, we were seriously wrong! Each room we've done so far has presented different challenges, including a bathroom which once we painted, re-trimmed and cleaned up, turned out to have a serious leak and created a rainstorm in our lower level bathroom. I digress...
So we started working on our Master bedroom (seems legit with a leaky bathroom, right?!). When we first moved into this room we were seriously puzzled. There is a walk through to another room (my office) which put a door on one of the long walls.. The other wall, had 2 windows... which meant we either had to put our bed against a window, against a wall or on a diagonal. Anyone who knows me, knows I LOVE balance, so any of the above are not an option. The first few months of living here, I propped pillows up and locked the door to center our bed in the room.
So Step 1, talking Adam into removing the door and closing off the walk through. At first, he wasn't a fan of this idea, but after months of sleeping against a door, he was convinced :)
North Facing Window (please excuse the mess, I was trying to get before pics and this is the best I could get!)
West wall that accesses our Master closet, laundry room and the master bathroom (which will likely have its own post because it needs some serious attention!) Notice the trim is painted the same color as the wall? Yes, our whole house is done this way = replacing a lot of trim!
South facing wall - double windows with our pellet stove in the corner.
It may be hard to tell but there was a chair rail running around the entire room, with the lower half painted one color and the upper painted another. The carpet was a dark green, and while it was in great shape, it was simply too dark.
We wanted to make this "our space" and a complete retreat from the rest of the house. Adam and I have very different styles, but we have been able to truly mesh them and make them our own. He's so incredibly talented and anytime I have an idea he runs with it.
You can see in the 3rd photo above that there is a pretty stack of wood... One of my favorite websites is Houzz and I find so much inspiration by the talented designers and carpenters whose work is featured on the site. One of the photos I found had an entire wall of barn board in the bedroom and since Adam LOVES the rustic and woodworking in homes, he fell for it and we decided to do a wall of "barnboard."
However, let's be honest, we aren't made of money and finding 100 year old barnwood within a few weeks of starting this project for less than a few hundred dollars simply wasn't going to happen. Then we considered pallets. Has anyone ever tried pallet projects? This wall was 18*8 = 144 square feet. That's a lot of pallets that must be harvested, sanded, sized, stained, etc. So, while it sounded awesome, we both knew there was going to be WAY too much work involved in using pallets. After searching Pinterest, I found a blog where they used 6' dog eared fence slats, so that's what we did. At $2.45 each, they were already a bit rustic looking, cedar, and not nearly as thick as rough cut lumber.
He gave each of the boards a light sand and then we started to choose different stains. We had a hard time finding the right color because under the garage light the boards looked one color and inside under incandescent light, it looked completely different. After a few attempts we settled on mixing Jacobean and Golden Oak. It produced a beautiful deep color with a bit of a reddish huge. I LOVE the way the stain brought out the different knots in the wood...
Here is a sneak peek of the wood going up!
As you can see, we've added quite a bit of electrical to the wall and I cannot wait for you to see the finished product!!
Adam working hard to put the wall up! You can see he marked off the wall, so he knew where the studs were. He nailed directly to the studs, we didn't put plywood up behind the wall (as others have done). He staggered the boards and as you can see the boards go directly to the door. We opted to skip trimming out the door. This was a lesson learned. The door itself was poorly installed and had to be reinstalled, once he did this, he realized he had to make adjustments to the boards.
The wall is getting closer to completion! I LOVE the way this turned out. We also opted to use black switches and outlet covers. We had to go with a white thermostat for our baseboard unit, and it stands out like a sore thumb. Fortunately Home Depot online carried many of the outlet covers that we needed and if you ship to store, the shipping is free. We also installed dimmer switches next to our bed, which again, had to be ordered online.
Again, Adam did incredible work. He's so talented. I wish I could say I had a hand in the technical aspect of hanging this wall, but I didn't. Design? Yes. That is all me. The rest? All Adam.
I hope you LOVE what we have done so far in this room. I cannot wait for the rest of the room reveal! Stay tuned!
xoxo
Kristen
