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While it may be tempting to start the big design plans for your new home as soon as you have the keys, sometimes the wait is worth it. Spend some time in your own space and get to know how it works best for you and your family. routine. (Plus, it gives you a little time to budget for it.) DIYer Rebecca Rajs (@rebs_home) agreed, saying it was worth waiting a year to renovate the master bedroom.
“When I moved into this house a year ago, I wanted to redo the master bedroom, but I wanted to live in this space for a bit before doing anything permanent,” she says. . “For the first year, I bought a nightstand and dresser from Facebook Marketplace to temporarily furnish my room while I dreamed of what my dream bedroom would look like. , wanted to make sure we fully understood our needs.”
What Rebecca learned from a year-long search for inspiration was that her bedroom needed more storage space and needed a little more color and texture. She used to be “just a white box,” she says.Between 2023 Spring Studio Challenge, Rebecca completely changed that. After clearing out the entire room, she started working on her priority: storage.
“I started by building a few IKEA PAX wardrobes along one wall,” explains Rebecca. “Once it was assembled, I pinned it to the wall and added filler to create a full-height wardrobe. I used IKEA doors, but added some trim detailing to make it look custom.”
After that she painted. Rebecca wanted the sliding closet doors in the space to be the focal point, so she painted them black. She then painted the walls, trim and custom closet Sage Meets Gray (Benjamin Moore’s Sea Haze). Rebecca added that the shade is so soothing that it’s a great addition to any sleeping space, and that it’s one of her favorite elements of “after”.
Next, Rebecca added crown moldings along all the walls. This was her first time DIY for her. “She had done a lot of research before, and I took the plunge,” she says. “I started out with a few templates for the cuts and ended up referencing them quite a bit during the process. I went in with the mindset that this wasn’t perfect, but it really helped.” In addition to the perfect dimensions and cut, adding the trim required a lot of finishing work such as caulking, wood filling, and painting, but that’s what made the IKEA wardrobe look like it was built into the room. It was an important last step, she says. “I had a lot to do in eight weeks, especially traveling, working full-time, and meeting other commitments,” she says.
After finishing the tedious crown molding, Rebecca moved on to electrical work, replacing the ceiling fans, installing sconces on either side of the bed, and then trimming the furniture and accessories. That’s when she brought in canvas curtains, a channel-tufted headboard (seen in previous images), soft bedding, and cushions.
Would you like to invite another DIY in this space? Artwork! “I wanted to splurge on lighting fixtures, so I tried to save money in other areas, such as self-selected artwork,” says Rebecca. She used joint compound to create a textured artwork on a large canvas and built a simple wooden frame around it. For an art piece above her bed, she recycled a black frame and downloaded a free public domain print to have it printed at a large scale at a local copy shop.
“I am very happy with how the room turned out!” says Rebecca. Her favorite part of the redo is the added storage. Her Cool Turquoise Closet Her system cost less than her $1,000, so it was budget-friendly too. “We have so much storage now, actually more storage than we need (but I’m sure we’ll fill it all up eventually)!” says Rebecca. “Exactly what I imagined.”
Rebecca’s design advice (as it relates to her new storage setup!) is to “think about the function of the space you’re remodeling,” she says. “I was tempted to buy a bigger dresser, but deep down I knew that I was still short on clothes storage, so I had to come up with another solution. Of course, functionality is even more important.”
