Tag Archives: bedroom

Closet Redesign

April 19, 2010

Back at the end of September 2009, I removed the existing shelving in our guest room closet and replace it with shelving to more suit our needs but make it easy to change as our needs may change.

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It is amazing how many items come out of a closet. Vertical storage really is an illusion.

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Old closet hardware vs New closet hardware.

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In September 2009, I had all of the items back in the closet, but found that for more support for the few clothes in the closet, I needed another upright and bracket in the far right corner. In April 2010, I finally finished my project and here are the pictures of the finished closet redesign.

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From Blah to Bold to Calm

September 7, 2009

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Guest Bedroom Phase 1 : Guest Bedroom Phase 2 : Guest Bedroom Phase 3

From blah to bold to calm, this bedroom is like a chameleon. This room started out and remained a guestroom for quite a while until recently when it became more of a craft room/office with an occasional guest.

Phase 1 of this bedroom with the white walls, borrowed furniture, and Ikea bedding and cabinet had that just moved in look since, well, I had just moved in.

Once the time came for painting this bedroom, phase 2, I was in a crazy color mood and things became a bit bold. Grass green walls and futon, electric blue cabinet and rug, green and yellow accents, and lots of stuffed animals. And, yes, this was used as a guest room still.

Phase 1 to Phase 2 changes included:

  • Upgrading the twin mattress to a full-sized futon
  • Painting the walls a grass green
  • Upgrading the small cabinet to a large cabinet to hold blankets and sheets and guest-type things
  • Adding lots of accessories including stuffed animals and pictures

The current design, phase 3, reflects a calming of my personality. The 5 color elements used to design the room are:

  • sage green
  • dark brown
  • brushed nickel
  • white
  • medium brown

This room still has a ways to go, but it is currently functional.

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Closet Semi-Redesign

July 17, 2009

This week’s project is the master bedroom closet. When your “workplace” is your home, there are always things you can find to keep up “continuous improvement”. One of the places I am always most critical of is the master bedroom closet.

It has changed over the years from a single shelf with no hanger bar just the rungs where nothing would slide more than a couple inches – a bar was added soon after moving in. The first improvement was the raising of the closet length shelf to add another shelf with a hanger bar so both my and my husband’s clothes would fit. Shortly after the new long shelf was the addition of 2 uprights with about eight 2-foot shelves to hold clothing that would normally fit in a dresser – I didn’t want dressers in the bedroom anymore. The shelving was installed in an awkward corner of the closet that clothes hung up just seemed lost.

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For this closet redesign, I wanted to be more efficient in the design and allow the natural light in the room to let us see the clothes we use most. I made my list of things needed: two 2′ shelves, two 2′ rods with hooks, 4 shelf supports, one 3′ rod, wire basket rack system, and baskets. I couldn’t just go out and buy the 2′ shelves or 3′ rod needed due to size and availability in the local stores, so I had to modify shelves and a rod I had – fun, fun, fun – and lots of work!

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I replaced the wood shelving in the awkward corner with 2 wire shelves to match the existing shelving and added hanging bars to the two shelves.

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The 4′ hanger bar was cut down to 3′ to allow a wire rack system that supports up to ten 4″ deep drawers.

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For the new rack with wire baskets, I decided to use 8 drawers since I needed 6 that are 4″ deep and 2 that are 7″ deep to support our necessary items. I am very happy with this design and it is as close to what I have always imagined this closet would look like. It is not my ideal closet, but it works quite well now. The only thing it is missing is a light. One day I will install one of those.

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Headboard Completed

April 11, 2008

With the wonderful weather we have had the last couple of days, I was able to stain and polycrylic the bedroom headboard. I have posted a new picture on the original post: Bedroom of a Different Color.

I was able to get some decent pictures of the wood while I was in the process of staining and sealing.

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Notice the grain in the wood. This is pine but with the 1st coat of American Walnut stain and the 2nd coat of Onyx stain, the wood has a two-tone effect with added dimension. It looks really cool and I am very happy with my project.

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Bedroom of a different color

March 28, 2008

As I have mentioned earlier, I have an obsession at times with changing the look of the inside of my house. This time it was the master bedroom’s turn to look different. For the last 7 years, my bedroom has been violet-indigo – the official color is called Heliotrope.

My usual process is to go to Home Depot, choose a few samples, bring them home, and then choose between them after viewed in various forms of light a couple times throughout the day. Then once a color is chosen, I go to the store and buy the color in Behr Satin sheen.

However, with my movement to green products, I was disappointed that Home Depot did not have a low or no VOC interior paint option. Just in case you don’t know, VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound and exposure to them can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat and cause choking, coughing, and a scratchy throat. I have experienced these things when painting using my previous paint, so after lots of research into earth friendly paint options, I chose to go with Sherwin Williams due to their most earth friendly paint option being zero-VOC – it is called Harmony. I bought a fan deck of all of the colors so there would be no running back and forth to and from the store to figure out what color I want. After strategically going through the entire fan deck and ruling out those I didn’t like, I got down to 3 colors. I then checked those colors with all of the items that would be going into the bedroom. After comparison, I decided to go with SW6039 Poised Taupe – I have been leaning toward neutrals recently, so it fit with the current trend of the house.

I bought paint last week and this Wednesday I painted the bedroom after removing everything from the room, cleaning the walls, and spackling the holes. The paint had barely no smell as it was going on the walls. Once dry there was no smell and we were able to sleep in the bedroom that evening. In addition, I only had to use one coat to cover the previous color completely – that is a first for me! From now on I will be using Sherwin Williams Harmony paint.

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Before : Master Bedroom : Heliotrope

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After : Master Bedroom : Poised Taupe

The headboard is stained a dark American Walnut so that it matches with the rest of the furniture and has a Polyacrylic Water-based sealer.

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Guest Room Flooring

May 31, 2007

The carpet in our guest room was in bad condition which used to be an office among other uses. Instead of installing new carpet, my preference was to install laminate flooring. We wanted a more durable and practical flooring option and something inexpensive too.

After some research, it was decided to go with flooring called Span from IKEA. SPAN is a locking, floating floor that needs the NIVÅ floor liner underneath for sound absorption and leveling. (Note: As of late 2009, SPAN no longer exists at Ikea. However, the equivalent flooring is now called SLÄTTEN and it’s $0.03/sq ft cheaper than SPAN used to be. Also, NIVÅ used to be a pressed wood fiber type of floor liner but is now polyethylene but says it achieves the same purpose.)

The clearing out the old carpet was a mess but cutting the carpet and padding into strips allowed me to carry it outside by myself. I geared up with safety glasses, face mask, mini-crowbar, hammer, Exacto knife, and RoboGrip pliers. It took me a whole day to clear out all of the carpet and padding. I cleaned up some spots that seeped through the carpet on the sub-flooring, swept, and then the floor was ready for new flooring. The entire clean up process took a couple of days.

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Installation of the flooring wasn’t without its ups and downs. No more than 15 minutes into installation, I squished the palm of my hand between a hammer and the block used to push the wood plank into place. I am usually careful, but a little bit of my skin went over the edge right before the hammer hit. I was then out of commission and my dad and husband worked on the flooring instead. It really was a nice bonding experience for them. I did get to help out with keeping them organized and removing items they no longer needed like packaging.

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The entire installation process took about 3 days including laying the floor liner, flooring, and cutting and installing trim. I was able to help out with trim. We even tackled the closet. Laying flooring in there may have been a little tricky, but it looks great. My dad made it look easy!

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