We’ve begun our final home improvement project of the year – updating our master bedroom

You know what’s ironic to me? This year, we had planned to add recessed lighting to the family room, and paint the interior walls for the entire main floor. If we were lucky, we wanted to paint/stain the railings as well. That was the priority. That was what we were going to budget for, save up for, and get done.

Yeah, that never happened.

Instead, over the past 6 months, we updated the main floor bathroom because all our guests used it, we replaced and installed brand new landscape lighting around the house, we replaced our garage doors and all of the associated hardware when the main garage door broke, fixed a broken pipe, removed some horseshoe pits, and decorated.

What happened? We looked at these areas and realized they seriously needed updating (and cost more than we planned), or something broke (garage doors, plumbing). We’ve gotten good pricing on the recessed lighting and painting, and we have the contractors selected, so that’s something.

It’s November and we were looking at our master bedroom. And we asked ourselves is this really the bedroom we want? It’s old. It’s dated. It had stained carpeting. The closet and its builder-grade wire shelving didn’t work for us, and it was dark. Here are two sample pictures from before we moved (not our current setup), and a current picture of the closet:

From what I read online, the master bedroom is generally the last place that people renovate. Yet it’s the place you spend a lot of time in. It’s supposed to be relaxing to us. We get dressed up here. And why are we living in a dark room? It was a hard decision, but we pulled the trigger on updating our bedroom in November. We sat around looking at this room we’ve had for four years, and it was depressing. I think it was the dark discolored drapes, and the closet that threatened to toss my clothes my back at me every time I tried to put my clean clothes away.

Seriously, do you see those piles of clothes precipitously stacked on top?

  1. First up, the the flooring. We went back down to Wholesale Flooring in Lawrenceville, and picked out a dark engineered wood with nice wide planks. The floor would be installed in early December.
  2. Next up, we spoke to a representative from Closets by Design, and we designed a brand new walk-in closet. Closet will be installed in late February and will accommodate all sorts of shoes and belts and ties and save the planet.
  3. Third, we had some fits and starts trying to find contractors to help us do lighting, changing up our sitting area, painting, etc, but contractors are flighty and hard to nail down. We briefly considered merging the sitting area with the closet, but we’ve decided to leave our sitting area as-is. We are turning it into a dressing area with future-state full-size mirror, places for shoes, etc. For now, new floor, new lighting, new paint. Dressing room furniture later.
  4. Fourth, we found a new electrician down in Englishtown to remove our single ceiling fan light, move our 2nd floor thermostat (located in our room) to accommodate a future TV, and install 10 new recessed lights in our main bedroom area and extra sitting area. We’ll have them back to add lighting to the closet in February.
  5. Fifth, we had our bedroom and the extra area painted, and Josh’s room as well (as he’s been asking.)

That is a lot done in a few weeks. Here are pictures below. I think it came out so nice so far. I love the amount of ambient light in both rooms, plus the floor and paint look great. It feels cool and modern.

We are still waiting to install a 55″ TV on the wall, Ethernet jacks and power, and get a TiVo Mini. We spent a lot so taking a breather.

The closet won’t be installed until February. That gives us time to save up a bit before we work on that room. What that will involve is replacing the two flush mount ceiling lights in there now with 2 – 4 recessed lights. We have to remove all of the clothes, remove the wire shelving hardware, spackle and then paint.

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1 Response to We’ve begun our final home improvement project of the year – updating our master bedroom

  1. Pingback: Follow-up on the new master bedroom closet | Tales From The Ipe!

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