what order to do things?

14 years ago

With the master bath reno complete, I need to start making decisions on the bedroom. It is a blank slate, more or less. Only two 'design' decisions have been made so far: I've picked the wall colour and painted it already (I know, that should have been last. I'm a slow learner). Plus, my brother-in-law made us a cabinet for our wedding a decade ago, we are using it in the bedroom.

So F&B Down pipe on the walls, and a mahogany "gentleman's dresser" will stay. Plus the ceiling fan, the large artemis wooden fan.

Here are the decisions left to make. What order should I move on this? What is the most logical?

- Closet doors. I've decided to do swing doors on my 12' reach in closet, but I still need to finalise the decision on the colour of the closets. Given the 12' size of this closet, the closet doors will be a dominant feature of the room.

- Drapes. The bed is against a couple of large windows with no view. So most if not all of this wall will be covered with floor to ceiling drapes.

- Vanity/Sink/Make up Area. I have 7' niche where I have will a custom made dresser and table with sink in the bedroom. This will be my zone, DH will use the sink in the master bathroom. My BIL will make this, once I finalise the design.

- Bed. Our current giant king size white leather sleigh bed is too big and too high for the room and for our low ceilings. We need to switch to a platform bed. But I haven't found one I can live with yet (for less a reasonable price anyway).

- Area Rug. Probably for the fairly large area between the fireplace and the end of the bed.

Thoughts on what I should focus on first?

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Comments (3)

bronwynsmom
14 years ago
The fancy word for this is "critical path."
All that means is, what has to be done before the other things can be done.

Your first step is to arrive at a specific, detailed design guide.

The first thing you need to settle on is a basic color palette, and a set of decision rules about "look and feel" - clean lines, or decorative ones? Hot or cool colors? Everything put away, or a lot of things on display? These rules will help you reject everything that doesn't belong.

Downpipe is a wonderful color, and opens all sorts of possibilities.

First, find a photograph of anything that has a simple color scheme that sings to you.
It can be a room, a painting, a travel poster, a seascape, or a flower arrangement, or a pile of shells -
Or choose a piece of china, or a scrap of fabric, or a decorative paper...

Then cart it around with you to collect samples, and make a materials board. This allows you to focus, not on just one thing, but on the whole project, so that you can achieve a harmonious, balanced room.

It will help you work out whether or not you want the closet to disappear, in which case you'd paint the whole business in Downpipe. Or whether you want to match the doors to the wood of your cabinet, or your flooring. Or whether you want to introduce another solid color, or paint it with stripes, or wallpaper it, or use louvred doors....that sort of thing.

Making the board will guide you in choosing the kind, color, and scale of pattern - or the lack of pattern - in your drapery, rugs, and bedding.

You'd include photos of the kinds of furniture and lamps and artwork you are considering, so that you can see everything together, and reject things that don't work.

Once you love the board and everything on it, and see how the color scheme and relative doses of finish and pattern work together, then you can start to add things in, and to edit your choices with ease.

This sounds like a big pain, but it is actually a lot of fun, and it will save you hours and hours in the actual process, and save you from expensive mistakes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Images of materials boards
Fun2BHere
14 years ago
Speaking only to your comment on a platform bed...you could use a Hollywood bed frame with a headboard of your design that your BIL would construct. If you use a lowline boxspring, the bed will be pretty low. That might be simpler than trying to find a platform bed you like.
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sochi
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks so much for the advice bronwynmom's, I agree I need to create some sort of board with ideas. I've already started this afternoon. Daisychain01 mentioned pairing dark gold with a rich gray like Down pipe and that thought has stayed with me. Plus I love the teal like undertone of the Down Pipe, so I'm thinking of teal and mustard or gold. I've posted a couple of images below that I found this afternoon. A start anyway.

Fun2BHere - I'm not sure what you mean by a Hollywood bed frame - just any frame you mean? I have thought of making a headboard, or having my BIL help. I'm pretty certain I want something upholstered though. I'm wondering at the moment how high the headboard can go given that the bed is in front of windows. Windows that will always be covered in drapes though. I do agree with you that making my own may be simpler - I've been searching for beds for a few months now, all I can find that I like are in Europe and usually well over $5K. Not really in the cards I'm afraid.