The Master Bedroom is Black!

I've been having an unusually discontented few months.  It all started when I came down with an awful cough, fever, and cold.  It seemed like I couldn't shake feeling tiered and sick.  Then Jai got sick, then Kiran got sick, then Scott got sick, and then I was sick again.  It was just awful because I just couldn't take the time off to recuperate and the time I took off I spent caring for Jai and Kiran.  Then things got complicated at work. Then I started feeling a little blue and I couldn't move on like I normally do.

So to make myself feel better we decided to get someone to paint a few rooms in the house.  The Master Bedroom is now black....to be precise Deep Space by Benjamin Moore.

Scott and I rarely get someone else to do the work in our house but this time having this room painted felt like a luxury.  We also got the old wallpaper holding together the plaster ceiling removed and we had the plaster fixed and painted.

The triangle pillow cover is from etsy, the pink pillow is from SkinnyLaMinx (via etsy), the kilim cushion cover is from eBay and the other black and white pillow in their Gran design from Fine Little day.  The dark linen sheets are from Crate and Barell, light pink garment dyed linen sheet is from Restoration Hardware and the purple bedspread is a vintage Kantha quilt. Both mirrors are vintage, the lamps are vintage teak lamps found at a flea market with new shades from Restoration Hardware.  We just hung these inexpensive cotton curtains from Ikea.  They filter the light beautifully when they are opened a little. At night when closed they completely block out all the street lights.

The picture above shows my favorite feature in this room....the curved plaster wall.  I love how it looks painted in this rich color.  It almost feels like this room was meant to be painted in dark.  To blur the boundaries we had the shelves, molding, and doors painted in the same color but in high gloss.

This room faces North-West and is generally flooded with light.  My hope is to fill the window sill with plants and also to hang as many plants as possible on the window to create our little jungle in this room.  Greenery looks fabulous against dark walls.

Is this room done? No! I would like to get the radiator sandblasted and powder-coated in a deep purple color.  Then I would like to build a wall of closets on the wall opposite the bed.  I think I will use Ikea Pax wardrobes but paint them the same color as the walls.

This is what the room looked like when we bought the house (please excuse the bad picture:

This is what it looked like when after we renovated it:



P.S. Dear readers I see that there is a lot of traffic to this website.  I would love to hear your opinions.

Shoe Shelf.

I am a big believer in buying great quality leather shoes with leather soles.  They aren't necessarily expensive (I am a size 7 and I am lucky enough to live close to Daffys where I find amazing Italian shoes in my size).  Whenever the soles or the rubber on the heels gets worn down I take them to be repaired.   I have acquired a lot of shoes over the years (what can I say I hardly ever throw out any shoes).  Anyway, I needed some shelves for my shoes and one very snowy day (last week) Scott built these shelves for me.

As you can see they are only half way done.  I want the shelves to go all the way up to the ceiling.  One of the shelves will hold my boots.  Once all the shelves are installed I will prime and paint the wood white.

 

This is a close up of the shelves.  I color cordinated the shoes (!) so they wouldn't look too cluttered.

The Bedroom continued...

This is what the bed looks like now. When we bought the bed it didn't come with any slats. We bought wooden slats from Ikea and my husband had to custom fit them to the bed. I didn't really pay much attention to what he was doing but it took a very long time to custom fit the slats on to the frame of the bed. The bed is technically King sized but it is King size but sideways. The Ikea slats worked perfectly. We also bought a King size mattress from Ikea and topped it with a four inch memory form mattress. This is definitely the most comfortable bed that I have ever slept on. The sheets are a Marimekko print from CB2.


I bought the lamps on ebay for about $45 for the pair. They had to be re-wired which was easy to do. The shades were a little bit more expensive and are from Restoration Hardware.

Dressing Table and Master Bedroom

Here's a picture of the dressing table that goes with all the other bedroom pieces. This dressing table is what caught my eye at the auction. I love everything about it!


This is an awful picture but I can't seem to take any decent pictures with digital cameras. I will post more pictures of the bed (with a mattress) soon.

The picture below shows an Afghanistan rug that I got on ebay for about $50!

Master Bedroom (with some furniture)

These are some pictures of the master bedroom while we were setting up the bedroom furniture. The picture below shows the bed frame. I ended up buying the bed frame, matching chifforobe, matching dressing table and matching end tables by accident! I went to Freeman's auction house on Chestnut Street, in Philadelphia and found what I thought were two end tables and a dressing table. I placed an absentee bid for a maximum amount of $175. I was totally excited when I got a call from Freeman's telling me that I had won the items. I went to pay and pick up the items when I found out that I had won a King size bed frame and a Chifforobe in addition to the end tables and dressing table. Clearly we couldn't fit all this in our tiny car so we had to find someone with a truck! We managed to get all the stuff in to our tiny apartment in center city (all the furniture had to be carried up a winding staircase). There was no place to set up the bed so we basically stored the headboard, footboard and all the many other parts under tables, behind couches and underneath our bed.


The picture below shows a closeup of the wood. What can I say other than that I totally scored. I have no idea who the maker of this fabulous furniture is other than the labels on all the pieces say that they were made in West Germany. I would guess that they are from the 1950s.


You can see a little bit of the chifforobe in the picture below. I don't generally like all my furniture (or plates, or mugs) to match but I love this furniture all together. I am so glad that all these pieces fit in our room.


I will post some pictures of the dressing table this week. The picture of the bed room is a little outdated but the furniture arrangement is the same. The furniture weighs too much to move around.

Master Bedroom

This is what the Master Bedroom looks like after we painted the walls and hung up the chandelier. I bought the vintage Spanish chandelier on ebay for $75 (and it had all the original crystals). I love the windows throughout the house. They are big and let lots of light into the house. All the moldings in the house are original pine or new pine that we installed. Some of the old wood had rotted so they had to be replaced. The old doors and old molding that we kept had to be stripped of the old paint before they could be re-painted. We hired someone to strip the old paint because it was far too tedious of a process. We also replaced all the hollow faux wood doors in the house with solid wood doors. I don't understand why all the doors these days are hollow plastic and why all the moldings are plastic. They look really bad and it doesn't cost that much more to get real wood.

This picture below shows the original pine floors that were sanded and re-finished. This floor was covered in greenish carpeting and beneath the carpeting there were two layers of linoleum tiles. The first layer of linoleum was made to look like wood...I am totally baffled that someone would want to cover up these amazing floors with something that looked remotely like wood!


This is what the room looked like when we bought the house:

There were three layers of wallpaper and crumbling plaster behind the wallpaper. It took us an eternity to remove the wallpaper and re-plaster the walls. The side of the wall that can not be seen in this picture is beautifully curved.

I will post some pictures this week showing what the bedroom looks like now.