Along with the start of the new year, B and I are starting some new projects. What started as a simple decision to buy new dressers for our bedroom turned into us deciding we needed to do new flooring, paint, and #allthethings which impacts all the other bedrooms in the main part of the house. It’s funny how one small thing can spiral into a million things so quickly. Today I’m sharing with you the first stage of our second floor project; our plans for the den / bedroom 3.
Our old house is like many others built 100+ years ago. The bedrooms and closets are small, and some of them are connected to each other. In other words, you have to go through one bedroom to get to another.
When we moved in, we chose to renovate the smaller front bedroom to convert to the master suite because it shared a wall with a bathroom and closet that we opened up to make our large master bathroom.

One the other side of the house, we kept the two front bedrooms the same, but we carved a full bathroom and hallway out of one of the two small, back bedrooms to make another master suite that can be accessed through the middle bedroom or through the back staircase off the kitchen. (See bedroom 4 and bathroom 3 above)
We don’t need extra bedrooms because it’s just B and I, but we do like the idea of having a guest bedroom suite. Because the back bedroom and bath connect to the middle bedroom (bedroom 3), we have always had one of the rooms set up as a den / lounge, more like a smaller extra family room.
All the front rooms upstairs have just the original subfloor. The previous owners painted it and didn’t do it well so the floors are now in pretty bad shape. We put carpet in the small back bedroom last year and had planned to do the same for the middle room this year.


When buying dressers turned into buying a full bedroom set and then realizing that we should put in hardwoods before moving in the new furniture…and while the room is empty paint the ceiling, walls and trim, etc., we ended up realizing that we’d need to use the back suite as our room for a while while we were doing the updates to our room.
Are you still with me?
So, the plan is to get the middle room done and the den/lounge set up. We will be using our current bed in the new guest room so we will move it into the guest room as soon as the den is done. When the new furniture arrives we’ll stage it in one of the other rooms while we empty our room out and do the necessary work.
When the room is ready, we’ll move our new furniture into our bedroom and then I’ll go back to finishing the guest suite.
If I haven’t scared you off by all the craziness, now it’s time to get into the fun part… the design.
B and I rarely use any of the rooms on that side of the house, but for any future guests, I want the rooms to be welcoming and comfortable. I knew right away that I wanted to do a lighter wall and darker trim upstairs. I’ve been wanting to try this look for a while and now that we are reworking all the bedrooms, this feels like the right time to try it out.

https://scenetherapy.com/scrivano-house-fixer-upper/
Because the long wall is kind of blah, I’d really love to balance the room out by maybe doing a feature wall with trim somehow. I love all the unique, modern designs but I feel like I need to stay fairly traditional for the house.

I’m also really wanting to try some brass fixtures. I’m still working on exact colors but the range I’m leaning toward would look beautiful with brass. Something like the color palette below.

We’ll have this room set up as a small living room but whatever we do with the room needs to still function and look like a bedroom. We won’t be here forever and I want to make sure the rooms work for a future family.
Bedroom 3 Task List:
- Strip wallpaper
- Patch walls after wallpaper has been stripped and sand
- Prime walls
- Paint trim
- Paint walls
- Lay carpet or hardwoods*
- Swap out light fixture
- Add new curtains
- Move in furniture
- Recover / slipcover leather sofa and chair
- Add pillows
- Art for walls
- Refinish armoire that we’ll use for linens
- Sand and paint radiator
- Refinish coffee table
As of the time this post goes live, we are already making progress on this room. Stay tuned. I cannot wait to share with you what we have going on!

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