Master Bedroom Makeover

Posted by Sophie Ingleby on December 16, 2019

When we moved into our house in January 2019 we knew we needed to decorate, and we wanted to start from the top of the house and work down. Our house is set over 3 floors with the master bedroom at the top. The bedroom is amazing (even if it does have a gold feature wall) and is very spacious. It even comes with a huge walk in wardrobe and of course, my little office. But it also had a little corridor as you entered the room caused by this weird box, that always made me curious. I wanted to know what was behind it and why it was so big, so I waited until my husband was at work and got the hammer out to find out.

My husband was absolutely thrilled when he found out what I’d done (not!) haha!. I knocked a hole in the middle of the wall and was shocked at what I found. Turns out this huge space was empty but it also enclosed the roof of the stairs. I had loads of thoughts at how I could transform and use this space. At first I wanted to change into a wardrobe space. “Why?” you ask, “you have a huge walk in wardrobe”. Well because the plan for this room is to turn the right hand side of the wardrobe into an ensuite, although this won’t be for a few years yet. We couldn’t work out how the wardrobe would work because the space only goes half way down the wall, due to the staircase underneath. So we scrapped that idea and my husband came up with turning the space into a built-in unit for the TV. I loved the idea! We have a sleigh bed and it takes up a lot of space in the room and so putting the TV in the wall would free up more space around the bed.

So after emptying the room out and sleeping in the living room, the first thing we had to do was measure the TV that was going to go in the space and make the hole in the wall bigger and neater. While we were at it I thought about using this space to add storage to my office which was next door. I then made a hole from my office into the space. It was messy and very dusty but finally we had an empty space.

My husbands dad is a joiner and he came to help us repair and make the space presentable. He added a frame and then built a box into the space. We also managed to run an extension cable from the back of the box, to the plug socket on the wall underneath. We could have got an electrician to wire in a plug to the box, but we wanted to keep costs down and thought that this would be an easy option. We had made quite a mess around the edge of the box and thought we might have to re-plaster the wall. Luckily, my father in law suggested we put architrave around the frame to hide it and it looked amazing.

The frame and boxing was now complete and now we were onto decorating. This was the hardest part of the renovation. We just could not find a painter and decorator at all. Many would come and give me a quote and never actually turn up to do the work and others would say they were coming to give me a quote and again, wouldn’t turn up. It was frustrating but we finally got a wonderful decorator in and he did a fantastic job, albeit months and months down the line due to the faff of other decorators. Because of the length of wait we had in finding the right decorator, I managed to get the carpet cleaned in the meantime. My husband thought I was crazy to get the carpets cleaned before we painted but it meant that as soon as the room was decorated, we could move straight back into it.

I knew exactly what colours I wanted because I’d been searching on instagram for bedroom inspiration. I colour matched the paint at B&Q and chose Farrow & Ball Hague Blue for the feature wall and Farrow & Ball Ammonite for the rest of the walls. It took 4 days but eventually it was decorated and we moved back in. The instagram account @afootontheladder is where I took most of my inspiration from, I mean just look at that panelling.

Because the room is such an awkward space because of the angles of the roof (loft conversion), we couldn’t get bedside tables or furniture that would match in both alcoves. In the end we decided to go different in each alcove and I managed to source a huge armchair and footstool on Facebook Marketplace. It’s a wonderful place for us to sit and read in and I love sitting there during the day with my laptop, doing my design work. I also decided that we could use some crates I had lying around as storage on the walls. They look amazing and I was so happy with how they turned out. The plan was to paint the crates in Ammonite like the rest of the walls, but we ran out of paint. I may buy a small pot in the future but right now it’s not causing me too much of a headache.

I saw some lights in IKEA and really wanted them above the bed but they had sold out and discontinued them. I found these lights in the Christmas section at Matalan and these are probably the closest I'll get to the Ikea ones. We added a picture shelf for when I get around to adding prints and that was it, the room is complete.

I still change the pictures on the walls and add to the crates when I buy things, but mostly it’s done. Our bedroom is such a cosy room where we can all gather and watch a movie, or just hang out while I do the ironing. I keep the dryer in the wardrobe along with my ironing board which is a game changer! I can pull the clothes directly out of the dryer, iron them and hang them straight up, it’s amazing! I absolutely love the space and I’m so glad that the gold wall has gone.

Let me know what you think of the space and if you have any questions in the comments below

Master Bedroom Makeover

Share this post

0 comment

Leave a comment