Suite Dreams
Hello. I am coming very close to wrapping up the decorating plans for my Sixth House. This is the third post focusing on the master suite. In the last post I reviewed all of the details for the laundry room, which will occupy/eliminate the "his" closet in the master once the renovation is complete. Before that I went through all of the plans for the master bath. Today I am going to talk about decorating the actual master bedroom. I talked all about the renovation of the space in this post.
To set the tone, the master bedroom has always fallen to the bottom of my priority list in terms of decorating and for this house I want to change that! For starters, John and I need a new, bigger bed. We have had a queen size bed for our entire marriage. The master bedroom in Baltimore, where we lived when we first got married, could not fit a king size bed so we had a queen. Although the houses since could have easily accommodated a king, I never "leveled up" choosing the practicality of using the existing linens over a larger bed. No more!
Currently John's home office is in the sitting area of our bedroom and it is a pit (of despair for me!). I am planning the decorating of our house from the optimistic perspective that once the entire renovation is complete (early 2023) John will no longer be working at home full time. Please God. Nonetheless, the sitting room portion of the master will still serve the dual purpose of office space for John (when needed) and a sitting area for me (and him, I guess).
The upstairs "kid's" bedrooms and bath will all be colorful spaces (I talked all about them here: Bedroom One, Two, Three, and the bath) and I want the master to be much more serene - read: mostly white, with blue of course. The existing furniture we have to work with for the space is all antique/vintage and the most formal furniture in the house:
It looks a bit like an antiques booth right now! I know I want the new bed to have mostly white linens with different textures. There will not be any type of headboard/footboard. Not because I do not like them, I love them. I hate to make a bed with most of them though. I love a well made, super tight tucked in bed and the way that works best for me is no headboard/footboard. I style the bed with a row of European pillows in place of a headboard and then add two sets of sleeping pillows and layer in decorative pillows. I love this look and hanging a beautiful horizontal piece or two of artwork above the European pillows achieves "the feel" of a headboard and allows for easy bed making. I will add a throw with color at the end of the bed and there will be pattern and color on the decorative pillows.
The bedside tables will be the Demilune table in the top left of the existing furniture board and the chest in the top right. We have matching ginger jar lamps and sconces that will be placed on each side of the bed as well. I am a huge fan of the look and practicality of sconces and lamps on bedside tables and have always wanted to do that in my own bedroom. Since the bedside tables (both were previously in the living room of our Grosse Pointe house) are a good size, it is the perfect setup for the "double lights". It is going to be great to have the option to really light up the room with the lamps and also be able to read in bed with targeted lighting in case your bedmate wants to sleep. The armoire has been John's clothes keeper since we were married and the chest is one of my clothes keepers lol.
The love seats are sentimental. My dad bought these to furnish the space over the garage in my parent's house in Potomac, Maryland. A man cave of sorts that he decorated all by himself and I must say he did a great job! My parents gave me the love seats for my first house and I had them slip covered. I was on the fence about donating them when we moved here and then I saw these images:
The love seats have legs:
I wanted to have them redone to look something like this for our Holland house:
Now I want to have them slipcovered in washable white linen, with a comfortable, down seat cushion made for them as well. I will place an extra long blue and white lumbar pillow on them and call it gorgeous! One of the sofas will be in the sitting room space and one will be in the bedroom space.
The arm chair that is included with the existing furniture will be reupholstered and placed most likely on the sitting room side of the room. John and I bought this chair at an antique show. I was immediately drawn to the blue and white fabric and then the dealer told us it was from Ireland and John said, "we'll take it." Yay. Here is a picture of the chair with the fabric it will be reupholstered in. A new and improved blue and white! This fabric was a top contender for the large club chairs in our family room, ultimately I decided it wouldn't hold up to the usage it would get in our family room, the master bedroom though is another story! I think the antique chair will look awesome in this Schumacher print:
When I saw the following picture it gave me hope for John's home office. Literally, I cannot put into words how much it inspired me and encouraged me! I really love everything about this image.
The table on the existing board is from my parent's house. This table, as well as our current dining room table, were both left on the curb as garbage by the previous owners of my parent's Connecticut house. I was at the house to help my parents move in and upon seeing the tables my mom and I immediately brought them both back into the house. The dining room table was painted a light greenish color, I think. My younger brother stripped it over the course of a few visits and when it was done I drove it, strapped on the top of my 1995 Volvo station wagon, back to his apartment in New York with him following me, pulling over every so often when one of was convinced it was about to fly off my car. When my brother moved he sent the table to live with me in Salt Lake and I have had it ever since.
Back to the table on the existing furniture board. My dad told my mom to throw it out when he saw us carrying it inside, instead my mom and I put it in the center of the kitchen and it looked perfect! My dad liked it when he came into the kitchen later that day and asked where it came from lol. It moved with my parents to Florida and my mom used it as her desk and now I'm going to use it as John's desk!
Here is a picture of it (it is currently behind the sofa in our family room):
The plan for the desk is to have one drop leaf open and to hang John's two humongous computer monitors on the wall behind it with book shelves above. Mark my words, bookshelves make everything better! The desk will be against the wall instead of in the center of the room which will be a welcome relief to my vision!
This is the mood board for the space:
And here are images I have been saving as inspiration for decorating:
This image from Frederic magazine is how I want the room to feel, even though it is not a bedroom. I absolutely love this room!
I have a very clear vision for most of the room. Two items I will most likely not decide until demo is complete and the space is being put back together are:
Should I have a rug cut to fit the space (it would need to be custom because of the angled entry - ugh!) and then layer rugs on top to differentiate the bedroom space from the sitting room space? If there are only area rugs, there is a wide area between the two designated spaces where you enter the room, leading directly to John's armoire. We will see. My instincts tell me to get a rug custom cut and layer. Once it's all open though it may not seem like such a big deal....
Should we keep a ceiling fan in the room or hang a light? My first instinct is to get rid of the fan, the practical me knows that we use the fan that is currently in the room.....we will see, most likely this will come down to how strongly John wants to keep it.
Should I have curtains on all of the windows? There is a large window in the sitting room space that matches the window above the tub in the bathroom. I am planning to have a custom made plantation shutter for the bathroom window, should I do the same here? I really want shades and curtains on the bedroom windows. I love the look of these curtains:
I want to do drapes in a dark blue fabric, similar to the fabric on the mood board. As an aside, that fabric is from Etsy. Most fabric is quite expensive and if you can find something you like at a discount or on Etsy for a good price and then have it made into drapes to fit your space, you will save a lot of money! The dilemma here is can the curtains be high enough and wide enough around the large window? There is an angled ceiling in the sitting area and I have measured it several times and a curtain rod can clear the window and make it to the edges of the window without running into the slopes of the ceiling, barley. I like curtains to be able to open as wide as the window and it would be cutting it close here. I also want shades with the curtains and to cover the top curve of the window, would it be too much shade fabric showing???? I drew it out on the listing photos, they are not taken on a straight line so the perspective is off a bit:
I know I want the curtains and would do them on the bedroom side of the room regardless. I will have to figure out the clearance on the other side after demo. Fingers crossed for this!
The last visual aid, the furniture layout added to the floor plan from the architect:
This concludes the decorating of the master. If you have advice on the window dilemma, please share!
Until next week, thank you for following along,
Kerry
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