Finishing Our Dream Bedroom After a Year of Renovations

It’s been a year since we blew the literal roof off of our house to change it from a 4-bedroom, 1-bath home into a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home. But it’s finally time to finish the bedroom and make this top floor bedroom/bathroom ensuite the space I’ve been dreaming up all along. It feels like we haven’t done very much upstairs but with the closets, the accent wall, and the bathroom now complete it’s time to finish the bedroom.

One of the main needs up here is climate control. In the heat of July and really throughout the whole year, we won’t be able to enjoy this renovated space without adding that to the bedroom. So without further ado, friends, let’s get started. Or rather, let’s get finished with this upstairs renovation cuz I’m over it.

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Tools + Materials

TOOLS

MATERIALS

DECOR

Let’s Review

So far these are the projects we’ve completed in our new upstairs.

Our semi walk-in closets. The full breakdown is on the blog too!

This slat wood accent wall with LED lighting. Again, you can also find it on the blog.

Oh, I also refinished my closet doors to make them look like wood. Blog post!

And the literal bathroom of my dreams which replaced the space that used to be my bedroom. Blog post with the details coming soon!

Air Handler Install

With the arrival of the dream team, we are ready to get this done.

The rest of the dream being my Mr. Cool unit, which I’m so pumped about.

4 years ago when we first moved into our home we installed a bunch of Mr. Cool units and it was literally the easiest thing and we’re still obsessed, so it just made sense to put another unit in our bedroom too. I reframed out this space between the closets to make sure we had the right amount of room for the unit.

We leveled and taped up this cardboard template to accurately measure out and drill the holes needed.

Full disclosure, I installed the air handler in the upstairs bedroom, but I actually installed three of these handlers. There are also two more in each of the two downstairs bedrooms directly below this one. They’re all attached to the same condenser, which is outside.

Once the mounting bracket was on the wall it was just a matter of hanging it and feeding a hose through the wall.

Condenser Install

Next we just had to drill a hole in the side of my house. This was the part I was the most nervous about because we have a lot of wires all over the place. But, Jordan and I did some careful measuring so I felt pretty good about it.

So, once the hole was drilled, Jordan inserted a sleeve through the house, and then the line from the condenser to the air handler was transferred between the wall. The unit upstairs actually had to be assembled in the wall itself, but the downstairs units were then attached on the outside of the house.

Also, a side note, the weather was fluctuating so much during the two days we were installing these. I don’t know what was happening, but the beauty of it is that these are split units. So, they run hot or cold, and they also have a dry and fan mode as well, which you can control from your phone. It’s so convenient, especially when Mother Nature decides to dramatically switch the weather every day.

It was a group effort to get everything organized running from the inside to the condenser, but we got it done.

These trim pieces that Mr. Cool sells with the units were super helpful for making everything look neat. I just spray painted them black and they matched the house perfectly.

Also, side note, if you’re someone who’s intimidated by a project like this, you don’t have to be. These units actually come labeled with everything you need.

Like, you cannot mess it up. Everything is labeled perfectly. There’s even a little monitor that’ll pump out an error code if anything is connected incorrectly.

So basically, if you follow the manual, it tells you what’s wrong and what you have to fix. I highly recommend the system to anyone, not just because it works really well, but because it is very easy to install.

Especially if you have a house like mine where you can’t easily open walls and put in lines.

Decor

Once that was all installed it was time to head back inside to finish up the room. Jordan helped me assemble our bed frame, yes we were sleeping on our mattress on the floor for way too long.

I talk about this a lot, but I love the renovation portion of every project, that’s where I feel most comfortable and then when it comes time to actually decorate and pull the space together with decor, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s like a foreign language. Needless to say I had a really hard time designing this space.

Luckily, I pulled some inspiration from the Metallica room, which was the bedroom that we actually took out upstairs in order to make a bigger bedroom/bathroom combo space. So, I did pull a lot of the same inspiration from that space which was helpful. But still, it was tough to make design decisions in this space.

I even had Jordan try 3 different nightstands before ultimately going with the first choice I had made. I just really struggled to get it right this time.

I did get some new things to pull everything together but I also used a lot of decor that we already had from other spaces in the house. This rug really went with the space and I’m obsessed with the artwork, which spoiler alert, ended up in a different spot.

Next I needed to find the stud (see what I did there?)

And we hung this mosaic I made a while back.

In the future I’d like to switch out this piece of art for something more substantial, because I think it’s a little small for the wall.

We went with this style of bedside lamp and I think the room really did turn out pretty cool, all things considered.

This is my favorite trick for hanging things. You take a piece of painter’s tape and lay it over your hooks, then take something sharp to mark little holes in it.

Take the tape to your wall, make sure it’s level, and just like that you have the perfect template to drill your holes.

And we have this comedian to demonstrate how a mirror works. But it looks great on the wall right?

Is it so weird to see me using a drill with my right hand? If you’re my hand doctor, don’t look, because I’m supposed to be the most careful with this tool, but it feels so good to get back to it!

Once the ceiling light went in, this space was pretty much ready to go!

The Reveal

If I could, I’d like to take a moment to remind you what this space used to look like before we literally took the roof off of my house.

I am so excited to finally not be living in a construction zone, at least in the upstairs of my house.

Yes, we still have other things to do like my second closet and also the closet by the bathroom, but really the main stuff is done up here and I could not be more excited to finally have a bedroom space again.

I also want to remind everyone that this was a 4 to almost 5 year process of me finally getting this bedroom and bathroom space.

It’s easy to watch other people renovate their homes online and think that the process is really quick.

But after living through a full-blown renovation where they took the roof off my house and had to rebuild it for almost an entire year, I have a newfound appreciation for being patient, and it made this bedroom/bathroom suite combination even better.

As always thank you to my dad and Jordan, literally couldn’t have done this without them. Give them some love in the comments.

So, definitely make sure to subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell so you don’t miss a thing, and follow me on the blog! I cannot wait to get back at it again with all of you very soon. In the meantime though friends, I’ll see you with a new project very soon. Happy DIYing.