Master Bedroom

This is one space of our house that needed very little renovation work (sigh of relief from my husband).  Carpeting was removed, hardwood floors refinished, ceiling fan added and trim and paint.   The very first color I choose when agonizing over hundreds of paint swatches in the Benjamin Moore showroom was Smoke.  To me, it is the quintessential blue-gray shade that represents peace and relaxation.  I just knew I had to use it in our bedroom.  It’s got less green in it than the colors I used downstairs in our kitchen & dining room but still works well with the color palette for this home (read more about those colors here, here & here).

Our bedroom is rather large so we decided to upgrade to a king size bed.  We also bought some new bedroom furniture.  I’ve been in love with a tufted linen bed for awhile so we splurged to get that, along with some almost black night stands, dresser & mirror because I like the contrast between the linen bed and the darker case pieces.  The furniture was the easy part, the hard part was finding the right duvet cover.  In my mind, I knew what I was looking for, but either it was too overpriced or the wrong shades of blue.  Finally, this duvet I was stalking at West Elm went on sale!

Our bedroom is finally coming together.  We hung reclaimed solid oak shelves Gavin made along a large open wall, displayed with an accent chair & garden stool found at Marshall’s to create a seating area.  We added wood blinds to the windows through-out the house because they provide privacy but still let in so much natural light.

Here are the before pics (sorry, not the best pics):

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Here’s our current bedroom:

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Bathroom Overhaul

Like many houses built in the 1940’s, our home has only two full bathrooms.  Our main bathroom is upstairs on the same floor as our bedrooms and the other full bathroom is in the basement.   The bathroom upstairs was tiny so part of our renovation was to enlarge it.  Gavin used the space that was occupied by the closet in our nursery (read more about that here) to give us more square footage in our bathroom.  We were able to upgrade to a larger vanity which is so nice for us to share the space in the mornings.  We left the toilet in the same place but bought a new one, keeping the styling traditional to match the bathtub which is original. The flooring was replaced with marble tile put down in a herringbone pattern and in the shower surround, we went with white subway tiles and a gray Moroccan print accent wall.  Gavin also added an overhead rain shower spout and we changed out all the bathtub hardware to chrome fixtures that match the sink faucet.  Behind the bathroom door, Gavin had to run a HVAC duct for our air conditioning we recently had installed.  He creatively hide it with built in storage cubbies.  Check out the before, during & after photos:

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After:

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Cubbies behind door
Cubbies behind door