When we bought our house, in the 90’s, it was a HUGE fixer upper. (We basically bought a neighborhood.) I had big plans to make it into what I envisioned. We have almost gutted and redone the entire house at this point. We’ve added on a laundry room with back hall and back stoop, gutted all the bathrooms and the kitchen, put crown molding in all rooms, added an antique banister and new mantel in the den, added a large deck with french doors, added wainscoting in much of the house, added a new cedar shake roof, added a bluestone and brick terrace and built a garden shed. The garage even needed work!

Believe it or not, one of the last things we have done, which we finished last spring, is our master suite. Nobody ever saw it but us, and there was so much else to do downstairs and outside, that it just languished until the end. After waiting years to do what I wanted, I did just that….

We started in the bedroom and closet.

Since the bedroom was large for the house, we blew both the bath and closet 18’ into the room. They are side by side on one end of the room. The original bathroom was tiny, so we also took that a foot into the closet. Here are the drawings.

These were the biggest changes to the space. We added crown molding to the bedroom, special window moldings and a custom armoire.

You can see me testing paint colors above on the wall and trim. We painted the walls Benjamin Moore Palladium Blue at 50%, and the trim was Benjamin Moore Linen White at 50%.

This shows the wall bumped into the bedroom, with two new pocket doors. On the left, the bath has a single pocket door, and on the right, the closet has two skinny ones that meet in the middle.

The Armoire

I did brushed nickel hardware on this piece, even though I plan on using brass in the room and you will see the hardware in the closet is brushed brass. The bathroom is chrome, and this piece is nearby. My answer is to have mixed metals in the room.

I had these overlays made for the mirrored sections. Mine were made to fit, but you can order many different sizes and patterns to put on furniture etc, for a custom look. The company is Overlays and they are great to work with. I painted them to match.

This is not an actual custom made built-in piece, but it looks like one. It was cabinetry from Decora, and we were able to specially order it. There are shelves in the mirrored sides, and the middle section has a TV and more storage space. We worked with Ridgeline Construction, my brother’s local construction firm. As always, they do beautiful work and are great to work with.

our little side job…

Actually it’s called “scope creep” but we finally completed something in our kitchen with this job that I’ve wanted to do forever. We also added antiqued mirror behind our small bar.

Part II is the closet and plans for the room…Stay Tuned…