I have this weird hobby of going through floor plans, from magazines, builder's websites . Thousands that I have gone through, I have noted one thing common everywhere. There is one bedroom that is larger than others - called master bedrooms.
As far as Indian ( my home country) architecture goes, I believe this is a modern concept borrowed from outside. Not that I have any regret in the borrowing part, actually I am happy for it. My grand parent's home in the rural part of Kerala ( Southern corner of India ), where I had spent the majority of my childhood vacations, had 6 bedrooms all the very same size. And they were represented by the direction the rooms were in. ( As in the bedroom on the south wall is called "thekkini" for south is "thekku" in malayalam, my mother tongue.)
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| Plan of our Home in India via |
Anyways, back to our modern era, when we moved to this current home, my first instinct was to use the bigger,larger bedroom with two individual closets as the master bedroom. The Realtor also addressed this as master bedroom with great enthusiasm. Rightly so, because it was indeed a big bedroom. Without a second thought we chose it to be our master. That made sense too, because our then 2 year old little girl was still co-sleeping. We lived like that for about 5 months.
Things started getting uncomfortable when she grew bigger and started claiming more space.The girl, twists and turns and - wait for it, talks in sleep, sometimes for quite a length.Then there were more things like toys, cloths, everything started ending up in this room.
That is when the switch happened. We opted for the smaller room as our bedroom, and converted the master into the kid's space. One of the best decisions we made as far as this house goes.
The room is 11'0''-10'9' and that includes a closet space and a non usable corner.But as humble as it is, it still lives large as the master of the house. It functions well, used to hold an office desk too when my husband was taking official calls from home until sometime ago.
I did not plan it out elaborately as I had done for my living room. This room grew more organically, adapting according to the needs of the moment.
We had only limited expectations from the start.Like,
1 ) Accommodate a queen size bed. We had our bed and mattress for 5 years now. Since a good set is really costly, I have no plans to upgrade it no matter what the size of the room is.
2 ) A reading space, at the minimum a comfortable chair to read or take official calls. We don't have any other space in the house where you can attend a phone call away from the riot our little one makes. That excludes the bathroom of course!
3 ) A place for cloths and nitty gritty. The closet space was a good start since we are on the minimal side as far as clothes go.
4 ) A place for displaying some family pictures.
The needs were minimal, and easy to accommodate and I had all that was needed in hand.
As I said earlier, we had this bed from a long time ago. To give it a finished look I just added a head board, which is actually foam board covered with vinyl self adhesive paper. It may sound lame for a headboard, but 2 years now, it hasn't budged. I feel like changing it though. My taste has evolved since then, and it is really not a big task to replace it with something better. How about a tufted head board? I could try.
Bedding is from Target, I have only two bed sheets that I rotate every week. Bedspread also from Target, a Nate Berkus creation I grabbed from the clearance section. He is an awesome designer - so awesome that staying away from him is better for your pocket.
I had the rocker I got from overstock.com . While it is not very comfortable for long reading sessions, it works just fine. As such my daughter wouldn't let me sit more than an hour on my own. The discomfort comes from the fact that it doesn't have a head rest. So a more comfortable recliner would be way to go for relaxed sitting, if you have space. Especially so if you have a TV in the room.
I added these planks from Ikea for a small display area. If space permitted I would have gone for a free standing shelf but, to have the floor free, opted for wall shelves. These are cheaper too. At $2 each for the shelves, 50¢ the brackets and $5 on the wood stain, the whole project came under 15 I believe.My figures might be off as all this happened more than an year ago.
We have a dresser added to the corner for the clothes and extra blankets and towels etc. I brought it home from Goodwill, it was a good mid century model that needed a little love from Howards Restor-A-Finish. It is magical as far as refinishing a beaten up wooden piece goes.
Here are some detail shots for your eyes...
Since this post is already this long, I think it is better to do a follow up post about the details and "how" parts. Almost every other thing, as art, end table, the dresser, rocker, the closet/wardrobe all have back stories worth a tell.
That concludes the master tour for the time being. Since I am a tweak-er, I am sure I will keep changing and experimenting.So don't be surprised if I come with an update after a few months. I simply can not "not change" anything.
Thanks a ton for visiting and do leave your comments below. Happy tweaking...
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