Monday, April 27, 2020

Farmhouse Love Episode #15


I am a wee bit behind on my Farmhouse Love posts. Mainly that's due to several rooms not being 100% finished, and me not wanting to show them until they are perfect. Well, this house has a long road to go, and it is constantly evolving, so I just decided to post what I have and then when/if I make updates, I can share them then.

Our master bedroom is one of the last rooms I chose to paint because people don't see it like they do other rooms in the house. I have been itching to paint it since we moved in, but the same can be said about every other room in this house, so it had to wait for its turn.

Before I show you the rest of the after pictures, I'm going to show you what we started with.


We looked at this house on two separate occasions, a few weeks apart. The first time we came this is what the master bedroom looked like. The owners were obviously in the process of stripping the wallpaper. If I had to date this room, I would say late 80s, early 90s. What do you think?


When we came back the second time, it had fresh paint. 


What we didn't know is that they mostly painted over the wallpaper they weren't able to strip, and even covered some of it with drywall mud. It was a hot mess.


The master bedroom has two closets on opposite sides of the room. This one is mine.


This bay window is nice. On move in day an observant friend noted that this room likely used to be a garage. It makes sense because the floor is concrete and it steps down from the rest of the house. This window was probably where the garage door was.


Here is Peanut Head's closet, with these odd little Hobbit drawers underneath it. The drawers are deep, very heavy, and not equally spaced apart. They make me twitchy.


Therefore, I covered them with drywall.


Now we can scarcely tell they ever existed. 😊

I started painting the ceiling and walls last May, and once we had consistently nice weather,  I dropped the project like a hot potato.


I picked it up again in October, at Peanut Head's insistence. I had been pinning faux brick walls on Pinterest for the last year or more, and Peanut Head went along with my crazy plan. He usually does, even when he thinks I'm cray cray.

We started by putting up these 4' x 8' panels which we found at Lowe's for $35.98 each. We used four panels for this wall, and they were a gigantic pain in the rear end to put up. After reading various tutorials, we went with the suggestion to cut out the half bricks on the ends. It's not a super precise process, so there was a fair amount of cussing involved. Peanut Head has a potty mouth.

Once they were all cut to fit, we slapped them up with some Liquid Nails and drywall screws. Some of the screws were removed once the adhesive dried.



The next step was to come in with drywall mud and a drywall taping knife to apply a German Schmear. It took a few evenings, but not near as long as it took me to retexture all the walls from the bloodbath that removing the wallpaper was.

I will say I was happy to have that nasty green carpet as a drop cloth. I was not careful at all.


Once everything dried, I sealed it all with a coat of watered down white paint. You can use a clear coat, but I was worried it might yellow over time.

Also, I caulked the corners and where the paneling met the ceiling for a cleaner look.

After this wall was done, we ordered carpet. That was in November.


Throughout this past year working on this room, I was always working on something to go with my final vision. One of those things was to make a half dozen or so dog bed covers. The dog beds get stinky and dirty so fast that I wanted to have a quick way to change out clean covers, so I started making very simple covers using this 10-Minute Pillow Cover tutorial. The only change I made was to add an opening for the handle of the dog bed for easier moving.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I've been a pillow cover making fool this past year. After my first cover I was hooked because it's an easy way to change your pillows without having to store a bunch of pillows. Of course we still have more pillows in the house than Peanut Head would like. What is it about men and pillows? I love my pillows.


In the making of so many dog bed covers I decided that I really like fleece for the covers. It's super easy to work with and it still looks nice after washing.


Plus, it's soft like my babies.


This one isn't fleece, but I fell in love with the pattern and the color is the exact shade of yellow that I wanted for my accent color in this room.


I also refinished our dressers and nightstands. This particular dresser was a hand me down, and although I don't love the way it looks, the drawers open and close like butter. It's hard to find good quality dressers with drawers that open and close smoothly.


I painted it with some cabinet paint and put some drawer pulls on it and it's a completely different dresser.


I've started folding all my clothes with the Marie Condo method and I will never go back. It's so easy to find what I'm looking for, and my drawers are never messy. I still think Marie Condo is a little whackadoodle, the way she talks to inanimate objects, but she nailed this folding method.

When Peanut Head goes out of town, or Stinkerbell goes to one of her various Civil Air Patrol camps, I sneak into their drawers and Marie Condo fold everything. They don't appreciate it, but it calms me.


I don't have a before picture, but I painted this dresser and the hardware, distressed it, and added some trim and decorative accents. I've had this dresser since I was in high school. It even survived a house fire back in 1984. It used to have a mirror, but that didn't survive the fire. I've been looking for a mirror for it ever since and I finally found one at a consignment shop.


Isn't it beautiful? It's larger than the dresser itself, and it probably weighs more too, but it's perfect. I didn't change anything about the mirror. I fell in love with it and I painted the dresser to match the mirror.


The previous owners left this shelf unit in my closet when they moved, but it needed a little TLC. Even though it's basically particle board with a laminate coating, it took regular latex paint just fine. A couple coats of paint and some contact paper and I was pretty happy with the result.


This area for my jewelry isn't finished yet. I want to make an earring holder and I haven't gotten around to it yet.


After the carpet was installed, it took awhile for Peanut Head to start on the trim. Neither one of us was in a hurry as there is always something to be done around here. He even made my closet door look like a little barn door.


We've had these mission style nightstands since the late 90s, and they needed a little refreshing.


I painted them and added new knobs. Each nightstand has nine knobs, so I just went with a cheap contractor's pack of knobs and they look just fine.


This is Peanut Head's closet and it still needs a major overhaul, but he ran out of winter days to work on it. That is not a problem. Ain't no one ever complained of running out of winter in Idaho. He'll get to it next year.

He did make this little hook board to hang his farm pants on instead of laying the nasty, dirty things on the window seat all the time.


It took me awhile to get things hung on the walls. I think that's one of the hardest decisions to make in a room because it takes some playing around with and holes.


Here's our new and improved window seat. You know I bought some pillows for it and made some new covers for them, don't you?

I also ordered cushions from Patio Lane and I love them. They're made with Sunbrella fabric so they won't fade and they have zippers! Now I can take the covers off and wash them. That makes me happy.

The folks at Patio Lane were super nice to work with and they called me when they had questions and to let me know when they shipped. I wasn't paid to say any of that either.


The buffalo check bedding came from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and the grey quilt came from Pottery Barn before it was on sale. I actually got it for my birthday over a year ago, and I stored it in my closet until we had the new carpet installed. Originally I had them switched so the buffalo check quilt was folded at the foot of the bed, but the grey quilt is slippery because the fabric is velvety. We'd be sleeping at night and the buffalo check quilt would just slide right off the bed like it was catching a wave. Not fun in winter.


I made the bed skirt using another Pinterest tutorial, and yes, I made some more pillow covers. Peanut Head complains when he has to take them off the bed at night, but we're not super dependable about making our bed every day, so he doesn't complain that much.

I still need to post about our home gym and our living room which are also mostly finished, so look out for those soon.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my! I love this post! From feeling “twitchy” to Marie folding to using the existing carpet as a drop cloth, I could not stop smiling- and, of course, the finished work is just enough masculine to make your husband feel at home in the midst of so much prettiness and pizazz! Perfect!

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