Bedroom Renovation

If you read my post titled Life Updates, you’ll know that we made the decision to move into the bungalow we inherited from my aunt. Before we could move in, it needed a fair bit of modernisation. It wasn’t falling to pieces, but it looked very dated and hadn’t had any work done since the 80s. We had a list of things we wanted to do, but we decided to start with a bedroom renovation.

We decided to make a start with the bedroom because we were able to much of this ourselves. A new kitchen was high on the list of priorities. That would have to wait for a while until we could get a contractor to fit us in. The pandemic had a massive impact on the construction industry with everyone spending so much time at home. People were wanting to improve their homes, which meant tradesmen were fully booked up for months. The other side effect was a sharp increase in the cost of building materials.

We would be able to the majority of the work required in the bedroom ourselves. After getting the ok from the Executors to start the work before the land registry transfer, we set to it. The pictures above will show you the starting point for our bedroom renovation. As you can see, it’s a little outdated. We wanted to paint the room rather than wallpaper, so we decided to take the whole room back to the plaster.

The Strip Down

The first thing that needed to go was the wardrobes. This took a lot longer than I anticipated and brought with it a few surprises. Firstly, there had been a gun safe in the wardrobe that was bolted to the wall with security bolts. The safe was gone, but the security cord was still there. Not having a tool to remove them, I ended up prising them out of the wall. The second surprise was the suspect electrical work the wardrobes were hiding. Lastly, I now had a light switch in the middle of a wall.

There was also some blown plaster around one of the electrical chases and some missing skirting boards where the wardrobes were fitted. I gave the contractor who we were using for the kitchen a call and he agreed that he could the required work in between the other work he had booked in.

Preparation

I carried on doing the rest of the work that I was able to do preparing the walls for painting. This involved removing the curtain batten, sanding the remnants of the wallpaper paste from the walls and filling various cracks and holes.

The window rebate also needed a significant amount of work. It was fitted after the wallpaper and when we stripped the paper, it did some damage to the plaster behind the beading.

All this took me a few weeks after work and a couple of weekends as well. I also invested in a lot of power tools. A wall sander and orbital sander were two additions to my collection.

The contractor came to redo the electrical work and when that was complete, I also asked them to re-skim the plaster on two of the walls. One to repair the blown section, and the other would be the feature wall. We had something special in mind for the feature wall, and for this I needed it to be as smooth and flat as possible.

With all the walls finished, complete with two coats of undercoat. We were just waiting to have the skirting boards and architrave finished off.

Feature Wall

From the outset, we had wanted a feature wall with a wood panel effect. Once the new skirting boards had been fitted, it was time to start. I won’t go into too much detail here, as there is plenty of information available online. It’s quite simple to do and gives added depth and detail to otherwise characterless rooms.

We opted for traditional style shaker panelling that would cover one entire wall. The wall in the room is quite big and would require several packs of panelling. The process is quite simple, it took me around two days. That included installing, filling, sanding, and caulking. The caulking was the worst part, tedious and painful You don’t realise how sharp the edge of MDF board is until you run a finger or thumb down it. There were twenty-four individual squares in the finished wall, and every one of them needed caulking. All that was left after that was filling in the joints, sand them down, then prime the wood ready for painting.

I really like the finished effect; it adds depth to the room and breaks up what is a very long plain wall at four meters in length. The head of our bed will be placed along this wall, so it will hide some of the panelling, but it still adds character. As you can see from the image above, we also got the carpet fitted and curtains up.

Furniture

For the last part of the bedroom renovation, we were up against time. We had scheduled delivery of the bed ahead of time, but before that arrived, we really needed to build the wardrobes. This may sound a trivial matter, but the wardrobes we chose were large as freestanding wardrobes go. We elected for two individual units that we would fix together. A six-door wardrobe and a three-door wardrobe in anthracite grey. The total length of the two units was just short of three meters. Hence the reason we needed to assemble them and have them in place before the bed arrived.

The finishing touch would be some LED lighting across the top of the wardrobes to provide subtle lighting as opposed to the harsh overhead lighting. Below are some images of the finished room.

We’re really pleased with the room and how well everything has come together. We still need to replace the ceiling light with one with an integrated fan unit, but that will be the last change.

If you want any more information, or if you want to let me know what you think of our bedroom renovation, you can leave a comment below. Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings. Until the next post, stay safe.