Master Bedroom BEFORE, DURING & AFTER

As you may recall, in the course of repairing our home after the fire, we decided to swap out the family room and master bedroom, so that the master bedroom is now where the family room used to be. Here are the pictures of that transformation.

The room where it all started. If I could go back to that night, Christmas Eve, and NOT make that fire burn so hot, I would in a heartbeat. But really, it was probably inevitable... who knows how many near fires we had over the years, that we were blissfully unaware of. The rafter wood that was butting up against the stove pipe was so old and dried out, it was just a matter of time before it could no longer take the heat. 

See the smoke coming off that beam? This was the next day, following the initial fire, and we had to call the fire department back out to put out more smoldering that we found in the attic spaces. 

It's almost enough to make you want to just walk away. 

But once the worst part of the debris was removed, it looked much more hopeful.

Everything was taken down to the bare studs. 

The beginning of the roof removal process. 

It's nearly gone. 

This was a crazy sight that we'll never see again. 

Love the smell of all that new lumber!

I hung every single piece of insulation in this room, and the room that became our family room, as well as the bathroom and closet. It took a few days. 

The room really started taking shape once the drywall was hung.  

This process took a couple of weeks. The high humidity made the mud very slow drying. 

The little kids "helped" me put the primer coat on. They sure love to help! 

And here it is finished. I have some decorating to do yet, but all in all, it looks pretty good. The furniture isn't in their permanent places. Since some of the other rooms are still unfinished, I have random pieces of furniture in this room. 

The door on the left leads into the bathroom/vanity/closet area, and the door on the right goes into Handy Husbands new "man room". We partitioned the huge room to make two rooms. And they're still plenty big. 

Walls Taking Shape

This is sort of "old news", but I never did mention this in earlier posts.... I guess I was too consumed with my beautiful kitchen (haha!). Here's a few random pictures of the walls and ceilings getting their insulation installed and drywall hung. 

So much pink stuff! I was seriously seeing insulation in my sleep! 

The wonderful folks at A&D Supply donated some scratch and dent dryall. Had more than enough for all our needs. What great people! 

Cleanup Begins

Cleanup began the very next day after the fire, but not before we opened our Christmas presents in the front yard! It was, after all, Christmas Day now. 

Once our makeshift celebration was complete, it was time to get down to the nitty gritty. 

In the following days we began work to sort through the rubble of our belongings ... salvaging what we could, discarding whatever was ruined by fire or water. 

We also began tearing out the water soaked Sheetrock and insulation from various rooms. We quickly filled up the largest dumpster that we could rent, and we will likely need to rent another one at some point, as our trash piles grow ever larger. While the debris removal takes places, it becomes increasingly obvious just how much work will remain ahead of us for a very long time. It is daunting, certainly, but we are not ready to give up on our home. 

Ways to donate: 

YouCaring

GoFundMe

Baby's Room Decor

We worked on the baby's "corner" of our bedroom today. It was hard coming up with some cute things without going out and buying anything. I had a couple of picture frames from the older kids, some cute little ducky figurines from MY childhood, and I just threw together some other random cuteness. Take a look:

 



The "pictures" on either side of the old drawer/shelf are actually pieces of wrapping paper saved from the baby shower, attached to foam-board. All in all I think it's kinda cute, but I still plan to add some original artwork from the older kids to decorate the other wall in Baby W's corner.

 

Now I just need to pick up the dresser my mom is going to loan me, and I'll be able to get his little area all set up and ready for his arrival! 

Prettied-Up Bedroom

"Thrilled" cannot even begin to describe how I feel about our bedroom. It's finally starting to look pretty! I hung our newly made barnwood sign over our bed, and placed some old chippy drawers on either side. I then found some junk knick-knacks lying around to decorate the drawer/shelves and here we go! I am so happy with the way it all came together! Take a look:

U8S8U6US27N2

My First Barnwood Sign

I'm so excited to share my first barnwood sign project. I've been amassing a pile of "good" pieces of barnwood ever since we moved out here, just waiting for the right amount of inspiration to finally get me to do something with them.

Today was the day!

 This beautiful specimen of rock-hard barnwood had multiple nails that I removed. I didn't bother filling any holes, as I believe they add to the personality of the piece.

I printed out my letters using a photo editing program, and then cut them out using a razor blade box-cutter. Note, these stencils (above) are just sitting on the wood, and are not spaced properly. I did eventually measure and level everything to get them as close to perfect as I could.

After the stencils were taped into place (scotch tape) I dabbed the paint on with a dry-brush, being careful to not get any under the stencils.

As soon as I finished with the last letter I pulled the stencil off. As you'll notice in the above picture, I used Bulls-Eye Water Based Primer as my paint color, simply because it was available and was plain white, and had the added benefit of being fast-drying and sandable.

After about an hour I lightly sanded my lettering with 80-grit sandpaper just to expose the texture and give it an old, worn look. I think it turned out great!



A Brighter Bedroom

I finally slapped on a quick coat of paint to the dark wood paneling that is in our master bedroom. It's not a perfect paint job, and I didn't intend for it to be. I just NEEDED some brightness in that room- it was so dark and depressing. We used some of the leftover paint from the boys' room, and I think it turned out so nice!

Now if I can ever get around to painting the ceiling and putting some pretty decorations in the room, I'd be happy!