House Fixings: The Master Bedroom

As some of you may know, we moved into our forever home back in August--a 1980s built all brick split-level that is completely outfitted with the original finishes. We fell in love with the location, the amount of land, the fact that it had a well-kept pool. However, when buying it, we knew we were in for a long haul of renovations and projects over the next 5 or so years.

With the layout, we actually have a lot more living space, but it is spread out and there is not a lot of closet space. In our townhouse, we had two walk-in closets in our master. At our new place, we have 1 walk-in that is half the size of the others that we had previously. So we were in a clothing and bedroom organization dilemma. We mulled over some ideas over a couple weeks--more furniture vs built-ins vs eventually expanding the current walk-in closet into the bathroom. I kept leaning towards a built-in closet option along our one wall, while my husband was set on finding an armoire and another dresser. After he came up empty at one of the local vintage barn sales, he was more easily swayed towards the idea of the Ikea Pax system that I had in mind.

It was no easy feat--we had to rent a Uhaul tow trailer in order to fit all the boxes. Thankfully, we pre-measured and planned and figured out that neither the Outback or the Forester would be able to house the monstrosities of these 93 inch tall systems. I have got to hand it to Ikea--first of all, there is a way to plan out exactly what you want for these systems (bar, pull drawers, pants hangers, lights, etc.) on the website. THEN, once you have planned it all out, it populates a shopping list....with the areas in the warehouse where everything is located (provided you pick the right store....we boo-booed on this and chose the Baltimore store instead of College Park, so then there was frantic trying to figure it out on our phones), AND the program even gives you the approximate cost! So, basically if you use it correctly, there isn't much in terms of surprises.

So, we set off, rented the trailer, took a quick look at the system in the showroom and then went to work to load 700 lbs of boxes and pieces into the trailer and then unpack and unload them at home.

My husband is a perfectionist to a T and while his inability to complete something without it ensuring that it is completely flawless sometimes drives me a bit batty (I'm constantly the voice in his ear--"Honey, nobody is going to notice that gap in the crown molding"), he does some damn good work. With me being the primary "distracter" of 4 and 2 year old minions, he is often left to his own devices when it comes to the renovation happenings in the house. After settling on the Ikea system, hubs looked up different ways to ensure that it looked like an incorporated/built-in piece. Once we had all the supplies, we chose a paint color and got that done, as well as updated the fan and electrical outlets.

The lonely and sad wall to be transformed (and dresser to be moved)

The original outlets

After many a YouTube videos--Hubs working his learned electrical magic. He only tried to burn down the house once! :)

Fresh and white

Securing the gigantic PAX to the wall, these giants are 93 inches tall.

Framing it in. Hubs used a coping saw to integrate it to the baseboards so we didn't have to demolish baseboard to get it into place.

Coming along

Spiffy auto-lights and soft-close doors!

All 3 in place and secured!

Out with the old...

In with the new!

And add the crown molding and we have a completed room!

The other walls are a light gray, and the wall behind the bed is a dark gray. I am definitely in a gray phase #grayalthethings

When I polled the Hubs about the project--he said the most challenging part was framing it in and figuring out a molding size that would look good in the room but also fit above the Pax piece. Then getting the molding up was full of issues because no wall is really flat/straight nor a room perfectly square. As hubs says--"Caulk and paint to make it what it ain't" :) The Pax system itself went up pretty quickly once he hit a groove, but the molding probably took him the better part of 3 weekends between needing brain breaks, rest for a back injury, and the procrastination of the caulking (which is his 2nd least favorite renovation chore other than putting up crown molding). 

BUT it is done (aside from maybe new bedroom side tables and dresser, but that is for another time), he now has a spiffy new closet space and I have taken over the dresser and small walk-in closet within our bathroom. The bedroom is mostly finished....for now. We are also toying with a relaimed wood wall/side table thing. Still brainstorming on that one. 

Stay-tuned. We got silly this past week and renovated our powder room top-to-bottom in the 7 days prior to our Housewarming party...