Recent Bedroom Updates (And What we have Planned)

Yesterday marks two months since we moved, and our bedroom was likely the last room to make the transition from “dumping ground of things to unpack” to “comfortable space that feels like ours.” So here is where things are right now – and what is still ahead of us (including some bad photoshop to give you a peek inside our heads).

If you recall from our before tour, this space was originally a living room (with another much larger living space upstairs with a pleasant big deck off of it). Since we swiftly realized that we’d rather share that larger room & deck as a family, and sleep on the same level as our kids, we knew this room would be strong as our bedroom. It also had a natural spot to add a closet & an ensuite bathroom… all we needed to do was close off that big doorway and add a door to the smaller opening beside it:

Simply to save you from scrolling back up… voila:

Lively fact: this whole house only had two rooms with doors that you could close for privacy: our daughter’s room and the bathroom. So it is a fairly big improvement to have a proper bedroom for ourselves with a door that closes (and a door for our son’s room while we are at it!).

It is also simply generally exciting that our bedroom is becoming the light-filled cozy space that we pictured during that rainy day walk-through in February. Especially since the majority of the items in the room are things we already owned.

Our only major additions have been the rug, the bed frame, and the curtains. We still need things like a proper headboard (we will likely make one – and are already building some for our kids’ rooms). And once we add a headboard, the mirror over the bed will likely move somewhere else (we will not have two round mirrors this close to each other in here forever). This is simply how it is looking right now.

One of our go-to things about this room is the wall of glass doors across from the bed. It gives the room TONS of natural light and will eventually open to a private little patio/courtyard space for us to enjoy. But for privacy and light-blocking reasons, getting those suckers covered was one of our top priorities. For reference, this is what the room looked like on our first morning here before we were able to get our temporary curtains (aka packing blankets) out of that vivid blue pod that you see outside.

We are still not 100% free of packing blankets (we tack them up every night in the three windows of the room while we not-so-patiently wait for our shades to arrive) but at least now we have blackout curtains on all of the doors to keep the sun out and give us privacy. You can hear more about why we chose them in this podcast episode, but the gist is that we used a Memorial Day sale to score some pleasant blackout-lined curtain panels in their “Ivory” color (that is the actual color name, but “talc” or “light sand” seems like a closer description). Since the walls are pure white in here (literally – they are Sherwin-Williams Pure White) we thought it would feel layered & less stark than going with white curtains on white walls.

We hung our new curtains using these brass curtain rods and matching rings – and once the fabric relaxed a bit after hanging them we could move the clips from the top of the curtain panels down about an inch to the nylon loops on the back of the panels so they are not all visible along the top.

And our especially long curtain rod is in fact simply 3 separate rods butted up against one another. We hung them next to each other for the illusion of one long rod, using a laser level to keep things straight as we went.

Remember I promised you some bad photoshop? Here is the rough idea of the privacy fence we are eventually planning to add to enclose the yard outside of our bedroom to carve out a private little courtyard area for us to hang out in at night. We are thinking simply a little outdoor seating area (perhaps a fire pit?) that Sherry and I could lounge around in after the kids go to bed. Perhaps we will grow some sort of flowering vine on the fence using this trick? You can see more of our inspiration for our private courtyard area here in this post.

The fence will not be that exact design/color/etc. This is simply bad photoshop, but you get the idea. Something to make that area feel nestled and more private will be pleasant. Heck, perhaps there is a Hands-on water feature in our future.

It is hard to tell in the photos above, but this picture that was taken from outside (at dusk, no less!) shows you the stairs that lead down to the yard from the bedroom. We have already hung some string lights that are charming to look at from bed, but other than that, there is not a whole lot of reason to in fact come outside and enjoy that space… yet.

The fourth set of double doors in the room is next to Sherry’s side of the bed. That is where we plan to eventually add an ensuite bathroom (it’ll be built in part of the side porch that right now exists out there). Although sharing one bathroom so far has not been nearly as annoying as we expected it would be.

We debated not buying curtains for this side because it will not consistently be this double door setup leading outside (and might end up being simply one frosted glass door that leads to a bathroom – which would not need curtains), but the ensuite bathroom project is gradually moving down our priority list, so we did not want to live with packing blanket curtains forever. Plus we figure we can eventually use these in the detached guest room that we are adding down the line.

I should’ve mentioned another purchase for the room that we made was buying a second one of these wood-tiled dressers that we are using as nightstands. We purchased one 7 years ago and, miracle of all miracles, West Elm still sells it! We worried it might have a distinct wood tone or hardware length or something in all that time – but it arrived and is identical to the one we have had for all these years!

Using dressers as nightstands provides us some much-needed clothing storage while we are still closet-less and, well, you know Sherry’s enjoy of anything inlay. Also keeping the inlay theme alive and kicking in here is this secondhand dresser (Sherry’s most beloved Facebook marketplace find to date) that used to live in the pink house.

We also picked up our new rug from West Elm and a certain someone who loves a soft surface to lay on is especially glad to have it in here. We truly hoped something subtle (both color and pattern-wise) and this ended up fitting the bill even better than we expected. It appears to be mostly pink in their website photos, but it has a lot of neutral tan and gray tones and even some lavender in person, which surprised us in the best way.

We only needed an 8×10′ size in here (for reference, our last bedroom had something like a 12×15′ rug in it!). It nicely anchors the bed area, and gives us a soft spot for our feet to land when we step out of bed. Or launch-out-at-60-mph-at-the-sound-of-someone-pouring-cereal if you are Burger.

Now that you’ve seen the “put together” side of the room, let us turn around and reveal the side that still has a ways to go: the fireplace side. How’s this for a motley crew of random objects? Old Ikea filing cabinet? Check. Air purifier? Sure. Comically small looking end table from Target a few years back? Ok. One lone HomeGoods lamp on one side tipping the balance a lot more in that direction? Why not. Please also remember that these are the windows with packing blankets tacked up every evening as well (now do you see why we wax poetic about the view out the bedroom doors by comparison?).

We think eventually we could do some cool symmetrical built-in storage on either side of the fireplace (smart storage is the key to life in this smaller house for sure!). But for now, this is where we are at.

At least it is better than where we were a few weeks ago!

I mentioned that we have shades on order for the windows, and after the natural gas company hooks up the service line to our tankless water heater, we are also converting the fireplace to gas logs. We will likely build some sort of mantle and figure out what to do furniture-wise in front of the fireplace. I like to describe our current arrangement as “a potted plant enjoying a good book whilst relaxing on a fur rug in front of a roaring fern.” There is a romance novel plot in there somewhere.

Before you ask where the exact woven leather stools are from, they are from Target years ago and they need to bring them back because they look about five times more pricey than they were ($60 on sale I think?). They do make these $99 counter stool versions though.

The other corner is where things get even weirder, but we have an idea that we are excited about. This corner is a quite strange not-square-at-all angle, and due to the wall sloping out there, there is an oddly large amount of floor space in simply that corner of the room. It was also the only place our minisplit AC/heater could be installed, but we have a plan for dealing with that whole strange zone. Go with me here…

Although we originally planned to add a closet next to the bathroom in that unused side porch area right off of this room, we realized that if we in fact enclosed this corner for the closet, we could (1) square off the corner a bit more so it is less wonky looking (2) eliminate that awkward extra unused floor space (3) earn ourselves a closet without having to cram it into the bathroom footprint at all. My photoshop below is Especially rough (it does not even have a door) but it gives you an idea of what we mean. It even seems to make more sense of that window placement.

Rather than a traditional closet, we are thinking it might look more like something below (with a drywalled side wall but two lattice doors in the front). This would allow the minisplit to freely vent air into the room, while also adding some pleasant texture, tons of function, and filling in that awkward bare space. It would not be the largest closet in the world, but you already know we have minimal clothing needs. Right now all of our hanging clothes are in our son’s closet, which is less than 28″ wide, and everything else fits comfortably in our dressers.

This inspiration picture is especially inspiring to us when it comes to the wood tone and pleasant thick framing at the top that we are drawn to.

It is not a fully formed idea quite yet, but we are excited to have an idea to explore that’ll make that corner easier on the eyes & a lot more storage-friendly. For now we are thrilled that our bedroom has come as far as it has in these last two months. Also do you have any idea how much you can store under a wood bed frame like this? It is kind of remarkable.

Now if our window shades can simply get here so we never have to see our packing blanket curtains again, I will truly be over the moon.

P.S. To follow along with our whole reno of this house, you can see every single update we have made right here in this FL House archive.

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