Then and Now: Large Bedroom

The house has three bedrooms, a big one, a medium one and a small one.  We were deliberating on which room should be used for  what.  The deciding factor (for me) was when a friend from church came over to help strip the wallpaper the first week we owned the house.  She suggested having the largest bedroom for the girls.  It is the quietest (doesn't face the street) and they'll always have more stuff than us.  Niall claims I take advice from Mormon women over anyone, and it looks like he's right again!

The room has a big window that overlooks the back yard.  It's hard to show the size in photos, but it has a lot of room.  I kind of loved the wallpaper that was there when we looked at the house.

But the wallpaper came down and after skimming the walls, we painted them (okay, the decorators painted them) the same mis-tint blue we used in the kitchen and bathroom.  Wipeable!

The room originally had a fireplace, but we chose to take it out when we knocked through the kitchen/dining room below.  Structurally it needed to be removed because of the weight.

There was a closet in the room, but it was only about a foot deep.  We could have used it to store books or perhaps a few clothes on a peg.  Instead, we removed it completely and used the door for the coat closet downstairs.  Now there's a radiator where the fireplace used to be.

And, uh, nothing where the closet was.

The strip out of this room did not go according to plan.  There was a crazy leak up in the loft that flooded down into the bedroom.  We had to remove a chunk of the ceiling.

And then the chimney and wall got removed.  No big deal.

Removing the chimney gave us about 18 inches of extra space we didn't have before.  We chose to use the space in the bathroom, so the bedroom effectively stayed the same size.  (Minus the little narrow closet.)  Sorry guy, you are adorable but not efficient.

I did mention the window is large, didn't I?

The ceilings in the room (and in the whole house) were in pretty sorry shape.  Our amazing shopfitter joiners (aka really good carpenters) fixed the issue by putting in small pieces of timber overlaid with plasterboard (drywall.)  

The joiners also built a new wall between the bathroom out of metal studs and drywall.  And then everything got skimmed.

We flipped the door around so it opens into the wall instead of into the room.  Also, George Clarke (love his Home Bible) suggested moving the entire door frame over slightly in order to make room for storage behind the door.  Since we rebuilt the whole wall on that side it was easily done.  (By the joiners, not us.)  

See the bookshelf that tucks neatly behind the door?

Along with the rest of the house, the room got rewired.  I kind of loved the pink pendant light cover, but it did not fare well in the remodel.

So for now it's just a bare pendant light.

The room itself is kind of a hodgepodge right now.  It's more function over form right now.   We have the king size (queen in the US) guest bed and a toddler bed in there right now.  Hurray!  With my mom visiting, and more family and friends coming this summer, it's a set-up that works for now.

We haven't quite decided what to do with the storage.  For now we're just using what we have.  In time I'd like to put in a closet/built-in wardrobe on this wall.  And use some of the fabric Amber sent us to make soft furnishings.  But we'll see.

I think a little girl is very happy to have this as her bedroom!