Now that the flooring upgrade was done, it was time to upgrade the bed. Kurt and I are both tall, and we have two 55-70 lb dogs that often like to come and cuddle with us in the night. Our queen size bed has been far too small for a very long time. Even without the dogs, Kurt and I could have used a King size bed. Our lanky arms and knees are constantly in each others way for a comfortable sleep, so a little extra room has been on the agenda for a long time….we just always had other priorities. Well, if you are going to re-do a bedroom, the bed needs to be replaced.
Luckily, one of my co-workers parents were selling their lake-house so I was able to get an almost new king size mattress for a great price. My co-worker kept the bed frame and matching dressers, which was fine since our little room can’t fit a king size bed and dressers. But I now had to find a bed frame that would work for us.
Our old bed was a platform bed, which we really liked, and I didn’t feel like buying a box spring, so I went with another platform bed frame. In the end, I found a frame that I liked and thought would match our flooring well. I ordered it and it got delivered a few days early, the day before we re-did the flooring! Perfect timing. It is a nice metal frame with wood accents. We went with the grey toned wood accents to match our flooring. It isn’t a perfect match, but goes very well together.
Since we finished the flooring so quickly, we were able to get the bed frame together so that we could have a great, relaxing sleep on the new bed. It helped since we were both a little sore from all the crawling on the floor. The frame itself went together really well and is super solid. I am always worried that the slats for the mattress will shift, but this one came with velcro strips on them for a solid hold to the rails. I had to throw screws in our old wood frame bed because the slats would wiggle loose all the time.
The first night on the new bed was awesome, though a little weird since the room around us was still in a bit of a state. We hadn’t replaced the floorboards because we wanted to paint the walls, so the bed was in the middle of the room rather than up against the wall. We also didn’t have side tables in the room, so our phone chargers, glasses and lamp were all just sitting on the floor. It was because of this that I realized that this bed frame is also quite a bit taller than our old one. The extra space was amazing, I felt like I could stretch out and not bump Kurt. I also didn’t have to contort myself around the dog, which was fantastic. I was looking forward to the next night when our room would be done.
The next morning, we were up early thanks to the silly time change so we relaxed for a bit. A morning hot tub loosened up the muscles and got us ready for another day of work on the bedroom. Before we headed out to run some errands for paint and supplies, we washed the walls so that they had time to dry before we got home with the paint. If you look closely at our last blog’s photos, you can see that there were definitely marks on the walls, and stains. We hadn’t repainted in 8 years, so it was bound to happen.
Once the stores were open we headed out to do some more shopping. We had decided that we wanted to do a grey paint, but darker grey. Light grey just looks like dirty walls. Kurt prefers cold undertones, I prefer warm undertones, so I knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge finding the right shade. Kurt decided to stay in the car with the dogs while I ran in to get the paint and supplies, leaving the final paint decision to me. After spending about 3 minutes looking at all the different greys I finally decided that it really didn’t matter since we were just going to be sleeping in the room. I grabbed 3 that I liked, and checked the backs. The first was a blue undertone, the second was a red undertone and the third was a true grey meaning it didn’t have a colour undertone. Easy choice, I went with the true grey one called Antiqued Silver. Then we would both like it.
Back home we went with all the supplies and got ready to go back to work. We got our paint clothes on, put the drop sheet down, added some painters tape along the floor and around the tight areas like the closet and door frame. I didn’t tape the ceiling because we have popcorn ceiling and I find the paint just finds way under the tape on that so I just trimmed the ceiling with a paintbrush. It took a bit before the muscle memory came back and I was a little less nervous about bopping the ceiling. Kurt followed me with the roller coating the walls.
When I was choosing the paint, I was prepared to do two coats if needed but I do truly love it when you spend a little more for a good quality paint and it only takes one coat. We lucked out and not only was the premium paint with primer on sale at 25%, but it also spread beautifully so it only took one coat. We left it to cure and sat back to relax and enjoy a bit of the weekend not working in the bedroom. Kurt went and did some hobbies and I had a nice visit with my sister for the afternoon.
After dinner, I decided to check in on the paint and see how things were looking. Beautiful! There were a few small spots near the ceiling that needed a little bit of a touch up so I did that and started prepping the floorboards to go back in. I had to use some snips to take the brad nails off the back so they would go back on nicely. I also gave them a good scrub, removing as many of the scuffs and bits of grime or dirt that were on them. Mostly it was scuffs, but there were a few spots that the dogs had painted with their dirty noses. Other than a few of the larger scuffs, all the marks came off.
I had remembered to label the backs of them so that we didn’t have to try and figure out which ones went where. I am sure it would have been easy to figure out, but this made the process a little faster. I also made sure to remember the order that they came out so that I could do the opposite going back in. The previous owner had conveniently cut out the moulding so that it overlapped the pattern beautifully. Once back in place, I used our brad nailer to secure them to the walls.
The only thing I did not do was add caulking to the floorboards yet. I do plan to do that, but ran out of time. Luckily the only thing against the wall now is the bed, so it will be easy to go back in next weekend and finish that up.
JK Building The Dream 