In the realm of home renovation, sometimes the most impactful changes come from rethinking existing structures rather than starting from scratch. Our journey to transform our bedroom from a door-filled corridor to a serene, functional master suite is a testament to this philosophy. What began with an unconventional eight doors leading outside from our bedroom has evolved into a meticulously designed sanctuary, prioritizing privacy, natural light, and unparalleled storage. This post delves into the strategic decisions, creative problem-solving, and evolving plans that have shaped our bedroom over the past ten months, culminating in a space that truly feels like home.
Our initial bedroom layout was, to put it mildly, unique. Eight separate doors graced the wall leading to the exterior, offering an abundance of light and picturesque views, yet also creating a somewhat fragmented and less private living space. After careful consideration, we streamlined this to six doors. While still generous, we primarily use the central pair for access, allowing the surrounding doors to continue their vital role in flooding the room with natural light and framing the beautiful outdoors. The addition of a privacy fence for our adjacent courtyard has been a game-changer, not only enhancing the seclusion of our outdoor space but also imparting a more nested, private feel to the bedroom itself. You can read more about our fenced courtyard and fire pit area here.
Reimagining the Bedroom Layout: A New Bed Wall and Cozy Nook
One of the most transformative decisions involved eliminating a specific set of double doors, which previously occupied the space now home to our left nightstand and the left half of our bed. This seemingly minor alteration had a profound impact: it allowed us to reposition our bed, creating a perfectly cozy nook that instantly elevated the room’s comfort and aesthetic.
To truly appreciate the transformation, it’s helpful to glance back at the “before.” When we first purchased the house, our bedroom presented a very different picture. The two-door section, partially open in the photo below, is precisely where we installed drywall to create our new, solid bed wall. This seemingly simple act of closing off an entryway paved the way for a more private and versatile master bedroom.
Previously, the bed was oriented differently, positioned against another wall. With the decision to drywall over those two doors, our bed simply rotated one wall to the right, finding its new home precisely where the former doors once stood. This strategic shift didn’t just give us a fresh focal point for the bed, offering a view of the fireplace and our elegant wall of doors; it also opened up an incredible opportunity to introduce substantial storage into our home. Along the wall where the bed previously rested, we embarked on creating a massive closet, promising more storage than we’ve ever known in this house! The excitement, even for our dog Burger, was palpable. While the top sections of the closets are still awaiting their final touches, the vision is clearly taking shape.
The method for “removing” that extra set of doors was quite ingenious: they remain on the exterior of the house, but we simply drywalled over them from the inside. Since the doors were slightly recessed into our bedroom wall, we were able to completely conceal them with drywall that was flush with the existing wall – remarkably, even keeping the doorknob in place! It was a truly seamless integration, creating a smooth, uninterrupted surface indoors while maintaining the exterior aesthetic for the time being.
Looking from the outside, the doors are still present. We chose not to upgrade their hinges or knobs initially, as our original plan involved converting these into a single interior door leading to an ensuite bathroom. For now, we’ve used spray-frosted glass on the interior side of the glass doors, providing a clean and uniform look from the exterior. Once we feel more comfortable having professionals in our home, we plan to have these doors fully removed from the outside and the siding expertly patched. John even has an exciting vision of adding two small windows above each nightstand on this wall, inviting even more light into the room, similar to this inspiration. This could be a concurrent project. We’re also contemplating converting other exterior doors in the house into windows, as mentioned in this post, allowing for further streamlined exterior work.
The Power of Ikea Pax: Our Ultimate Storage Solution
Back inside the bedroom, along what was once our bed wall, now stands a magnificent wall of Ikea Pax wardrobes. These aren’t just closets; they are our favorite, time-tested closet solution. We’ve relied on Pax systems in our first home back in 2008, and again in our previous house, and it’s incredibly satisfying to have them back. Their appeal lies in their high customizability, exceptional functionality, and affordability. They are also remarkably easy to “build-in” for a polished, custom look, and the variety of door options is a huge plus. To tie into the room’s aesthetic, we even added elegant brass hardware, perfectly complementing our brass doorknobs and curtain rods, creating a cohesive and sophisticated feel.
Our Pax system consists of three wardrobes: two impressively wide units with double doors, each measuring 8 feet tall and 39 inches wide. These serve as individual closets for John and me, accommodating all our clothes, shoes, bed linens, and travel bags. The third, a smaller 19-inch unit, is tucked away in the corner, largely hidden behind the side table. This clever placement allowed us to omit hardware from this particular door, making it blend seamlessly with the wall, almost like a decorative paneling. This smaller unit is primarily used for storing our Christmas tree and holiday decor. It’s a testament to practical design; accessing it only occasionally means that moving the side table is a minor inconvenience for the significant gain of concealed storage. This approach prevents it from visually screaming “blocked closet door” while still serving a vital storage function. Any day, we’ll choose functional, not-often-accessed storage over empty, unused space!
For now, the elegant inlay dresser with its mirror serves as a temporary fixture. We have grander plans for this particular spot in the future, which we’ll delve into shortly.
UPDATE: A few months after these initial installations, we actually decided to add an additional Pax wardrobe to the space. You can learn more about why we expanded and how we achieved a seamless built-in look here. We’ve also shared a video tour detailing how we organized the interior of our Ikea closets.
I realize that the wider shot of the closet wall might make everything appear closer than it is. To provide a clearer perspective, here’s another angle showcasing the generous amount of space between the side table, the bed, and this wall of beautiful, functional wardrobes.
The Euphoria of Optimized Storage and Downsizing Benefits
Please allow me a moment to express the sheer joy and relief of finally having this much storage space after years of living without a dedicated bedroom closet. It is, quite simply, euphoric. I often joke that smart storage is my love language, but it’s truly no jest—it’s the absolute truth. Embracing a lifestyle of “smaller living” comes with countless rewards: a house that can be tidied in under an hour, reduced utility costs, minimal clutter, and the complete absence of lawn mowing. These benefits of downsizing are phenomenal, but when you master the art of finding a designated spot for every item and implement efficient, concealed storage solutions, it feels like you’ve truly outsmarted the system. You’ve won the game!
This approach allows you to reap all the advantages of a smaller footprint while simultaneously enjoying the immense satisfaction of an organized home where everything has its place, and anything you need is easily accessible. It’s an unparalleled feeling of order and tranquility that I find hard to fully articulate. It’s not just about having fewer things; it’s about having the right things, neatly stored, making daily life effortless.
The Ripple Effect: Kids’ Rooms Get a Storage Makeover Too
The monumental addition of our bedroom closets initiated a positive cascade of upgrades throughout our home, particularly benefiting our children’s rooms. Previously, John and I relied on three-drawer dressers as nightstands for our clothes, with our hanging items temporarily residing in our son’s closet (since his formal hanging clothes were minimal). Now, with the Pax wardrobes fulfilling our storage needs, our son’s closet is entirely his own! This in itself feels like a significant upgrade. We further enhanced his space by adding custom shelves and painting it a vibrant, fun color. The three-drawer dressers that once served as our nightstands and clothing storage (as seen in this older bedroom photo below) were now ready for a new purpose.
These versatile dressers have now found a new home in our daughter’s room, neatly flanking her bed and providing her with significantly more storage than her previous spindly, open nightstands. We thoughtfully removed their metal legs to achieve a more suitable height for her bed, enhancing both aesthetics and functionality.
The addition of six large dresser drawers to her room meant that the larger dresser across from her bed was no longer necessary. This freed up valuable space, allowing us to introduce a dedicated desk area for drawing and creating comic books—a space we anticipate will be incredibly useful for her upcoming middle school homework. While the shared desk upstairs currently serves its purpose, we believe as she grows, she’ll appreciate a quiet, private spot for her studies, much like we did growing up. You can explore our daughter’s room as it looked previously here and here.
In this dynamic round of “musical furniture,” our daughter’s old nightstands serendipitously found their way into our bedroom, now serving as our own. We adore how their wooden tones complement the bench at the foot of our bed. This bench, as you might have guessed, doubles as a clever set of “doggy steps” for our beloved Burger. He effortlessly bounces onto the white ottoman first, then to the bench, and finally onto the bed, where he promptly falls asleep – a cherished daily ritual.
It’s truly remarkable how perfectly our daughter’s old nightstands fit into our room, just as our former nightstands seamlessly transitioned into hers. And yes, that is a door visible beneath our bed in the photo above. This door is destined for our guest house in the future, so it won’t be residing under our bed permanently. This entire exercise in reallocating furniture underscores the surprising adaptability of existing pieces when viewed with a fresh perspective.
Our significant bedroom closet upgrade also inspired another valuable enhancement for our son. As mentioned, by relocating our clothes from his closet, it’s now entirely his domain. We further customized it for him by adding practical bins and shelves, transforming it from a “dresser-in-the-room” situation to a highly organized, built-in solution. This allowed him to also request a desk, so he now enjoys a built-in bookcase on one side of his room (you can see his room here and here) and a brand new, dedicated desk and chair on the other side, where his dresser used to be. Both children have gained valuable, functional spaces that didn’t exist before—a wonderful side-effect of our master bedroom closet project.
Regarding the interior organization of our Pax closets, we’ve incorporated a thoughtful combination of our favorite Ikea fittings. This includes pull-out drawers for easy access, adjustable shelves for flexibility, hanging bars for various garments, and pull-out baskets at the bottom, perfect for linens and other essentials. You can find a comprehensive breakdown of the various options Ikea offers in our last house’s closet tour here. We can even accommodate all our luggage within these spacious wardrobes (though it also fits under the bed, giving us a delightful dilemma of choice!). To have two viable options for luggage storage truly feels decadent—put me on Real Housewives immediately!
Evolving Visions: Our Future Ensuite Bathroom Plans
As mentioned earlier, the inlay dresser currently residing in our bedroom is merely a placeholder; it will likely find its permanent home in our guest house. This fluidity in our design decisions highlights a crucial lesson learned over ten months of living here: initial plans, especially those made remotely and under pressure (like coordinating with a contractor during a pandemic), are subject to change. It’s truly amazing how two days of walking through a house last February, making an offer, and sketching out plans from many states away doesn’t necessarily lead to a lifelong strategy that still feels optimal after experiencing the space firsthand. The beauty of slowly updating a house while inhabiting it is precisely this “wiggle room” to adapt and course-correct as you go.
We made a very deliberate choice not to immediately add an ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet or undertake a major kitchen renovation before moving in. We are firm believers that living in a space for a while illuminates its true potential and challenges. Ten months of daily life have given us invaluable insights into how our family uses these spaces—what we miss, what we cherish, and what initial ideas might not feel as ideal as they seemed a year ago. In essence, a process of trial and error, coupled with ongoing adjustments, proves immensely helpful and effective. The longer you reside somewhere, the more deeply you understand your family’s dynamic within the home, allowing for truly informed design decisions.
So, here’s the exciting pivot: the spot currently occupied by the dresser will eventually become the new entrance to our bedroom. And the area immediately adjacent to it will transform into our future ensuite bathroom. Please indulge my humble artistic skills as I present my amazing rendering:
The delightful irony of this new plan is that there was originally an entrance to our bedroom precisely where we now intend to create a new one (albeit our desired door will be a much wider and more modern design). This historical coincidence is actually excellent news because it confirms that no critical plumbing or electrical lines run through that wall. Even better, the flooring extends uninterrupted beneath it, presenting a significant advantage for the renovation!
In fact, I recall someone many months ago asking, “But what if you decide to move your bedroom upstairs and convert this room back into a family room?!” Our response was something along the lines of, “We’d simply reopen that doorway. It’s not load-bearing; it’s just drywall. Then we’d move our bed upstairs and our couch down here.” While that might sound like an oversimplification, removing drywall to reveal an existing doorway and relocating furniture is a weekend project, not months of extensive work and a fortune in expenses. Sometimes, you truly don’t know what works best until you experiment and live with it for a while. So much of home design can be done, undone, and reconfigured. It’s perfectly acceptable to guess incorrectly; paint can be repainted, furniture can be rearranged, and even drywalled doorways can be un-drywalled.
Sidenote: Regarding the persistent question of moving our bedroom upstairs, we, as a family, genuinely prefer having all our bedrooms on the same level, so this isn’t a consideration for us. Furthermore, occupying the largest room in the house for ourselves, coupled with a huge second-floor deck that we all love to share, would feel like a peculiar choice for a house of this size. (To illustrate, it would literally be larger than the very spacious master bedroom in our last home, and this current house is 1400 square feet compared to 3150). I could elaborate for many more paragraphs on how smaller spaces can “live larger” and how certain layouts make all the difference, but I’ll reserve that discussion for another post.
The key takeaway is the glorious flexibility that comes with materials like drywall—they can be undone! This adaptability is a cornerstone of our trial-and-error approach to creating spaces that serve us better over time. Many of these alterations are incredibly inexpensive, or even free. We swapped nightstands between two bedrooms, spent less than $100 on drywall and supplies to close off an interior door, and that was it! The primary cost involved the Ikea wardrobes, of course, which were always part of the plan to create a dedicated closet for this room. (Seriously, bury me in Pax; nothing compares!).
Future Plans: A Seamless Ensuite Integration
Returning to our bedroom updates and future aspirations: our goal is to relocate the bedroom entrance to the spot currently occupied by the inlay dresser (referencing my very rudimentary drawing once more). This strategic move facilitates our new ensuite bathroom plan for the room, allowing us to utilize the entire original footprint without the need for an expensive and complex addition.
By opting not to build an attached bathroom for our bedroom on the side porch, we preserve those two beloved windows in the kitchen (seen below), which we’ve grown to appreciate immensely. This decision also means the entire bathroom renovation will be far more affordable and considerably less complicated, avoiding extensive structural work.
Furthermore, we get to retain the side porch beyond those windows as a valuable outdoor space, frequently used and enjoyed by our children. But let’s refocus on the bedroom once more, as this room has always presented a peculiar excess of space in one specific area – almost like an additional rectangle appended to the main rectangular footprint of the room. Behold, this entire distinct area:
The new bathroom wall will neatly align with the front of our built-in closets, with a new doorway connecting them. This thoughtful placement will grant us a perfectly sized ensuite bathroom directly off the bedroom, complete with a generous window, making it a comfortable 9 feet long by 6 feet wide – an excellent dimension for a house of this scale. The mini-split HVAC unit will be discreetly relocated above our future bedroom door, fitting snugly into a recessed area. Our HVAC specialist confirms this will be both highly efficient and an ideal covert spot for the unit. This entire plan means we avoid a more complex and costly renovation, and crucially, we get to preserve those two aforementioned kitchen windows. It’s a win-win-win situation!
Even with the creation of the ensuite bathroom, the bedroom will not feel diminished in size to us, especially when considering the ample space we still have available on the other side!
The addition of a bathroom wall will also perfectly center the fireplace on the remaining bedroom wall, as you can see below. Our plan includes building in the two cabinets that currently flank the fireplace, perhaps topping them with an elegant counter material, to create a more integrated and sophisticated look.
The area you see above has organically evolved into our designated puzzle and laptop zone. I frequently take Zoom calls from that table for work, and John often uses his laptop here when he seeks a quieter workspace than our shared office upstairs. It’s also where our family slowly but steadily works on puzzles together. While the current chair and ottoman arrangement might seem a little unconventional, imagine a luxurious upholstered chaise in their place, or perhaps an elegant chair and ottoman combination similar to this inspiration, creating an even more inviting and cohesive seating area.
This room, bathed in abundant natural light, simply begs for added functionality. We’ve learned a fascinating insight: when your bedroom is on the main floor, you find yourself using it significantly more throughout the day, unlike an upstairs bedroom which often becomes merely a place to retire at night. This newfound appreciation for main-floor living might explain our shift from our previous “you just need a bed in a bedroom” mantra. If there’s ample room and it’s flooded with light, why not seize the opportunity to make it a more versatile and cherished space?
Here’s one more shot from the side, offering a clear view that those two central doors can still be easily opened, providing convenient access to that section of our yard.
A Bedroom That Truly Works For Us
Is it uncommon to have a table in the bedroom? Perhaps. Would others have opted for a sprawling walk-in closet instead of our wall of Pax wardrobes? Absolutely. But do we deeply love the feeling of this room and profoundly appreciate how perfectly it functions for our family? An unequivocal yes to both. Home design is ultimately about creating spaces that resonate with your unique needs and preferences, and we’ve found our stride here.
As a video often conveys more than a thousand words, here’s a quick tour of our bedroom to give you a better sense of its flow and current state. (Please note: I strategically avoided swinging the camera over to the future bathroom area, as it currently houses a pile of laundry, but rest assured, you can find detailed photos of that specific area further up in this post.)
Note: You can also view the video here on YouTube.
Having navigated the world of home blogging for quite some time, I anticipate questions like, “But can you still access that storage cabinet in the back corner now that the table is there?” The video clearly demonstrates that I can easily slip into that corner to film, proving access is not an issue. It’s simple enough to pass through and retrieve items. I’ll also share a quick boomerang video of the doors opening and closing in real-time on my Instagram Stories (I still haven’t figured out how to embed a boomerang in a post without crashing everything!). But trust me when I say, no table is going to deter me from my cherished vases, candles, and baskets!
So, there you have it: our bedroom, ten months into our journey in this house. It’s a space now blessed with a glorious amount of closet storage, a clear vision for a future ensuite bathroom and a relocated door, and a sun-drenched table perfect for puzzles and quiet work. It feels truly good to be here, and we are incredibly grateful for the progress we’ve made in making this house our home.
P.S. To explore all the transformations and upgrades we’ve undertaken in this house over the past ten months, making it truly feel like home, you can delve into this comprehensive archive (we’ve covered a lot of ground!).
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