Bedroom Makeover

Our bedroom was originally supposed to be a guestroom. (We had planned on converting the guest house into a master suite complete with a spa bath, but our checkbooks laughed and said, dream on!!) This space was the first room we completed during the renovation and we were so proud to FINALLY have a room that was done! Once we realized our master suite would have to wait, we converted the guestroom into our bedroom.

We jokingly referred to our bedroom as the “Cat Room” because the previous owner’s cats had used the grass-paper on the walls as their scratching post. It had the same lovely green carpet as the rest of the house and about 3 inches of fur covering every. single. surface. Did I mention I’m deathly allergic to cats??

Once we cleared out all the fur and pulled up the carpet, we were pleasantly surprised to find hardwoods underneath! There was damage of course from the animal urine, but they were in fairly good shape. The biggest obstacle was getting the wallpaper down. The “grassy” part peeled right off, but it left the paper backing behind. Once the paper backing was removed, it left a residue from the glue that was used to hold the paper to the wall. After much scrubbing and cleaning, we finally had bare walls. Two coats of Kilz later, it was ready to paint. Fresh coats of Sherwin Williams “On the Rocks” went on the walls and “Toque White” for the trim. We used those colors throughout the house, keeping our colors neutral. We rented the machine and redid the hardwoods ourselves. By doing so, we saved ourselves a few thousand dollars. A darker stain was needed to cover the damage left behind from the animals, but it worked perfectly for the colors I knew I’d be using throughout the house. A small chandelier completed the room.

After spending a year renovating our house, we set a deadline for ourselves to get moved in. Most of the major renovations had been completed, but there were still a few minor “tweaks” here and there to be done. Using what we had, we set up our bedroom to basically have a place to sleep, knowing that later we could make it our own. Later finally came, and I set about to make our bedroom into a place we would look forward to spending time in.