MFH Home Tour: Master Bedroom

Phew! It’s shaping up to be a busy summer. Today I helped cleaned out my husband’s uncle’s basement, but before I headed over to do that, I snapped some pictures of our master bedroom to share with you guys. Ready for the next edition of our home tour? Let’s do it!

When we bought our house almost 13 years ago, our master bedroom looked nothing like it does today. It had horrible wallpaper and grungy carpet hiding the original heart pine floors. I really wish I had a before picture to show you guys. I might just have to pull out the floppy disks one of these days and hunt some pictures down. Ha!

But suffice it to say, it took a ton of work to get our bedroom to this point. We pulled up all the carpet upstairs, and I stained the floors myself. We also stripped all the wallpaper, patched the walls and repainted. That project had a bit of an ironic ending. When our neighbor’s tree fell on our house five years ago, we ended up having to tear those walls out. They’ve since been replastered and look great, but if we had only known that was going to happen we could have skipped all that wallpaper stripping! Oh well, at least all of that is behind us …

and our reward for all that hard work is a bedroom that we love. Brown is my favorite color, so the brown walls were pretty much a given.

I chose Cobble Brown by Sherwin Williams.

The bed is from Restoration Hardware. I don’t buy new things often, but I made an exception for this bed …

and the bedding, too. Several years back, Pottery Barn released this bedding set. It’s a reproduction of a 1920 bark cloth pattern, which happens to be the year our house was built. I really wanted it, but I waited until it went on clearance before I snatched it up. If it looks familiar to you, that’s because it’s also on our sofa throw pillows. I bought a bunch of euro shams when they finally hit my price.

Our nightstand didn’t come from a catalog, though. Not even close. I found it at a flea market for $20. It’s an Edison Shaving Machine circa 1900. It no longer has its working parts, but it was used for removing a layer of wax off of a used phonograph cylinder to prepare the surface for a new recording.

We didn’t know what it was when I bought it, but the “Edison” label on the front drew me in. Owning something that Thomas Edison invented is just cool. And I love the way it looks.

This slipper chair came from Target many years ago. I snagged it online during a sale.

And all of the vintage throw pillows piled up on it came from various estate sales.

The little table next to the chair is an old patio side table that I found at a yard sale for $1.

And that door behind the chair leads to my gift closet. I’ll give you a tour of that another day. Eventually we plan to turn that space into a master bath, but for now it helps me save money on gifts.

The blinds came from JCPenney many moons ago. When we first got married, we didn’t have any money to spare, so I earned gift cards through Mypoints, until I had enough to cover the cost of three sets of blinds.

This dresser came from a neighbor’s estate sale. It’s solid maple, and dates back to the 1960s. You don’t really come across maple furniture very often, so it caught my eye. We paid $300 for the set, which came with two dressers, two nightstands and a bed. We kept the dressers and sold the rest. I don’t normally like to break up sets, but it was just a little too matchy-matchy for my tastes.

I bought this sewing box at an antique store when I was 12. I’ve always been a nester, so when other 12-year-olds were out buying candy and toys, I was out buying housewares. Not normal, but that’s just me. Now, I have a 12 and 14-year old, and they’re the same way. Maybe it’s genetic.

At any rate, this sewing box has been with me for a long time, and I’ve used it for lots of things over the years. I currently use it to hide all of our remotes. I’m not a fan of clutter, so I try to have hiding spots for things.

The shelves above my dresser are an IKEA hack. I saw their version of the shelves before I was married, and asked my dad if he would make me some. Don’t quote me on this, but I think he gave them to us for our first wedding anniversary.

They’ve been in every house we’ve ever lived in. I’m not big on knick knacks, but I have a few knick-knacky things that I have sentimental attachment to. These shelves are perfect for displaying them.

One of the cubbies holds my college post office box. The building that the college post office was housed in burned down after I graduated. The mail boxes survived, and they sold them to alumni as a fundraiser. My parents bought mine. It was just the face plate, so my dad built a box for it.

Another one of the cubbies holds an antique tea cup that my great-grandmother gave to me. Like I said, it’s just a nice spot for displaying my treasures.

This is the final wall in our room, and it’s a neat one. See how part of the wall sits at a 45 degree angle? I love it. Since our oldest daughter shares that wall with us, she has the same 45 degree wall in her room. The house didn’t have electricity when it was built, so it definitely wasn’t designed for a TV, but it’s the perfect spot to hang a TV.

Here’s the mate to the dresser that I showed you earlier. This one’s my husband’s.

We made the art hanging on the wall out of some architectural salvage. They’re corner blocks from Victorian doors. I bought a whole stack of them at a yard sale, and my husband attached them together for me. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

The letter “A” is from a vintage sign. I found it at an estate sale for $1, and gave it to my husband as a gift.

I don’t remember where the hobnail vase came from, but we’re big milk glass fans in our house. Even my kids are milk glass collectors.

And here’s the TV that I mentioned earlier. The shelf that the Blu-ray player is sitting on is a Restoration Hardware hack.

It’s built out of black iron plumbing fittings.

and cost about a million dollars less than the real version. You may remember, we used the same hack to build a bookshelf in our office.

Well, I’ve shown you every last inch of our bedroom. Let me show you the master closet while I’m at it. It’s through this French door.

See that little button-like switch? It works just like a refrigerator light. When you open the closet door, it automatically turns on the closet light. And when you close it, it shuts it off. Nifty and frugal. We’ve used them a couple places in our house.

Here’s what you see when you open the closet door. The closet still has its original cedar shelves …

And most of the original cedar paneling, too. Unfortunately the crew that handled the mitigation after the tree fell on our house, botched the job, and we were forced to remove the original ceiling. Kind of a bummer, but we put cedar back. I wear a lot of wool sweaters in the winter, so I apply cedar oil from time to time, so it will continue to keep the moths out.

This is my side of the closet.

I use my half of the shelves on the back wall for jeans and shoes.

And here’s my husband’s side of the closet.

When we had the walls replastered, we opted to leave the chimney exposed. I like the way it looks.

And here’s my collection of vintage jewelry. It’s hung on a couple IKEA kitchen racks.

I rarely wear any of it (I’m a no-frills kind of girl), but my daughters raid it regularly.

I probably need to take another picture of this so you can see what I’m talking about, but our closet rods are built out of galvanized plumbing fittings. We borrowed the idea from a thrift store in Manhattan, and incorporated it into our closets.

There’s a center support bracket that connects to the floor with a flange, so it’s a lot sturdier than a regular closet rod. And it looks a lot cooler, too.

Well, that wraps up the tour of my master bedroom. I’ll be back soon with another installment of our home tour.

In the meantime, you can catch up on the rooms you’ve missed here.