Sunday Favorites -- Early Master Bedroom Changes!

Happy Sunday, and thanks again to Chari of Happy To Design for her Sunday Favorites blog party; we all love recycling, don't we? I'm recycling a post from February 7, 2009, about our master bedroom here at That Old House.

This is part of the earliest stages of That Old House's renovation.

This post was the first time I had ever participated in a blog party, in this case, Metamorphosis Monday. Cindy of Applestone Cottage gave me the courage to do so ... I think she created a monster! Thank you, Cindy, for your encouragement then, and now!

Click here for more blasts from the pasts!

(I will be among the missing today into Monday, as
my daughter Alida and I are taking a down-memory-lane
trip to the beach house; it's been almost two years since anyone
has stayed overnight out there, and we want to do it before Alida returns to California.)

Now... the old post:

************************************

When you buy an old house, you usually buy a whole load of ... shall we say "unique" decorating? Take our Master Bedroom ("Please!" as Henny Youngman used to say).

Below, "before" . . .

The stripey wallpaper in this bedroom made me dizzy, and since we'd chosen this room to be the master, that was not A Good Thing. I felt as if I were going to tip over when I looked at it. It was really the oddest effect.
The vertigo-inducing stripes had to go.

Built-ins are lovely, but this one (above) was an exception. It was built across a door into a walk-in closet. To get to the closet, you had to go out into the hallway. Go figure.

When this new part of the house was built more than a hundred years ago, that closet probably had a different function. It is 7' x 12' so it's large enough that it could have been a sewing room, a nursery, even a box room.

(Don't you think houses should still have box rooms?
How lovely to have a room piled with boxes, for which you needn't apologize!)

Work in progress. The painters have stripped off the wallpaper, bless their hearts, and I no longer get dizzy when I enter the room. However, removing the paper reveals some fairly funky areas of old plaster:

Again, painters to the rescue. They work on the walls -- a lot -- and then cover them in a tinted-to-match oil-based primer, and then, it's more work, and more plaster repair.

Gapping moldings are caulked, and the old, odd built-in cupboard is removed. We find out we can't use the old door as it won't fit properly in the opening, so there is (still) no door on our closet. It is an old house, so we are not surprised.

Interesting effect, no?

Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel (below). Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue (HC-144) covers walls, which have been restored but not made perfect; we don't want our walls looking new! Like us, they wear their years with pride. (Or so I tell myself.)

This room is directly above the dining room that's been featured in previous blog posts; same triple windows, same bay.

Oh my, those windows are dirty! Oops.
Look instead at the lovely blue walls and crisp white woodwork.

And there we have it, the metamorphosis of the master bedroom at That Old House, Part One. I have to start sewing for this room, too. I bought a wonderful Greef/Schumacher cotton and can't wait to make the curtains, and I think perhaps a dust ruffle for the bed.

For home dec fabrics, I heartily recommend www.fabricguru.com for their amazing selection, cheap shipping, and really really good prices. I love a bargain! I paid less than $4.00 a yard for the Greef cotton, a teeny fraction of its original price, and it is first quality.

Speaking of bargains, I found a rice carved mahogany 4-poster on Craigslist. Very cheap. I need a step stool to climb into it. I do love to recycle! -- Cass

*************************************************