Please raise a hand if your bedroom tends to be the last room in the house to get an overhaul…
My hand is raised. It’s totally us. We take it to the extreme though. We lived in our last home for 4ish years and every. single. room was given new life, except for ours. Want to know when we ended up painting it? When we did the last walk through of the house. We walked into the room and were like, holy shit, these walls are terrible! So after a quick stop at Home Hardware we stayed up til midnight painting that sucker.
WE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO ENJOY IT!
Fast forward to our current home. We’ve now lived here for 8 years and nada had been done to the master bedroom. BUT, that all changed when the unexpected 2020 renovation fell into our laps. WTH is that? I explain it all here.
I wish I could remember what the name of the colour was but I threw out the paint can when we moved in. I swore if we ever had to touch up the walls, we’d repaint it all. It’s was essentially the colour of a Concord grape still on the vine, except a shade or two lighter. It wasn’t my jam. Haha, sorry, lame dad joke there. As in typical fashion I forgot some true “before” pics and only snapped some once we started patching walls and moving furniture, but you’ll get the jist of it.
So here’s the view coming through the door to our bedroom. The first door I’m on the right is our closet and the second door is the master bath. The armoire used to sit flush against the far wall, facing the door. Look at that dingy carpet! Oof, she was bad!
This angle is the left side of the room when you come through the door. Here you’ll see what my current read at the time was. Can you also spot the colour the walls used to be before the previous owners painted it purple?
And here’s the view from the corner we just saw in the last pic, now facing the door. There were SO many holes to patch.
I struggled with colour selection for this space, I wanted light and bright, but also wanted it to flow with the rest of the upstairs & our master bath. But, I was very against doing it all the same colour. And Eric was very against white – which was my first choice. I ultimately chose Benjamin Moore’s Moonshine.
The first coat went on and I was like ‘hmmmm’. But when the second coat went on, my reaction was UGH. What did I just do. The grey carried so many green undertones, I just wasn’t feelin’ it. I knew I wanted to do a feature wall but Eric was shooting down every idea I threw at him. He tends to be very minimal and I’m sometimes over the top. I was so frustrated with the paint color that I let him win the battle of the wall. We opted just to paint it, while completely omitting any type of wall treatment.
Looking back at the pics, it doesn’t look too bad. For the feature wall, I wanted BOLD. Something outside of my comfort zone. Enter Benjamin Moore’s Essex Green. It’s the deepest of greens and is so moody and so beautiful, ugh, I just love it. Right when I thought I’d have to repaint the other 3 walls, along came Essex Green and totally saved the day!
It took 3 coats of paint to completely cover the wall and get it to the depth I wanted. The picture above shows coat 1 on the left and the second coat on the right. Such a difference between coats! The pic below shows coat 1 and the picture below that one shows coat 3 in the same area.
Honestly, so many hearts eyes for this paint colour. I don’t even know how many times I’ve said out loud to Eric “I fricken love this green!” It’s been enough times now that he just ignores me. Oh well.
Now on to the good stuff, the after pics!
Honestly friends, this room is such a vibe now. The carpet was replaced & is so bloody plush and nice to step on. We purchased a piece of unfinished walnut and sanded it smooth and gave a few coats of clear sealer to make the shelf above our bed. It has so much character. Walnut is my top pic for any wood type out there and if it weren’t so pricey you’d see it all over our house!
I hesitantly started adding a plant here and a plant there, seeing if Eric would notice. Nothing was said. Then when we were at Dutch Growers one day he saw the marble queen pothos and said “We should get this for the bedroom”. I was floored. It was like that IKEA commercial where the woman is all “Start the car!!!” That was my reaction. Grab, pay and leave before he changes his mind!
The other walls are still bare. I’m taking my time deciding on what I want to put on them and be more intentional with my choices, rather than filling spaces just to fill them. I would also like to bleach out the furniture to get rid of the cherry stain colour and add some black hardware and a couple of new side lamps. All that will be a part of Phase 2 and there’s no rush to get there right now.
Hope you love it as much as I do!