The master bedroom . . .

I thought I had my room put together enough to last awhile.  The colours that Mom had on the walls work well so there is no push to paint.  Yes, there's nail holes from where she had stuff on them compared to where I have stuff on them.  Normal things like that.  But, overall, it was working fine.  

I had given my oldest daughter our large chest of drawers when I was rearranging our Moncton house for sale . . . doing the declutter thing.  When we sold the Moncton house, I sold the long dresser & matching mirror as it was HUGE and would have not fit in this bedroom.  I had just refinished a chest of drawers intending to resell but chose to keep it for our own use here.  How did I possibly think I could go from having a large walk-in closet, large chest of drawers, and 9 drawer dresser to 2 normal closets and one regular sized chest of drawers??

Well, I threw some clothes out, gave tons of clothes away, I have under-the-bed storage containers full, we put double rods in the two closets, filled them to overflowing, and filled the regular chest of drawers.  And thats after all that purging I did in Moncton!!!  How could I possibly have that much clothes?  Well.  I have always tended to keep all my clothes, period.  Clothes that I've outgrown years ago thinking that someday I would fit back in them but although I at times I had gotten down to the same weight, I hadn't gotten back to the same shape.  And, styles change, etc.  Ryan is worse than I with keeping every article of clothing he ever owned in our marriage INCLUDING outgrown, holey, torn, stained clothes.  I gave away outgrown shirts of his and still hear about the missing shirts that "disappear in the black hole" (his favourite phrase).  LOL  The good news is that he finally actually got rid of some of those holey, torn, stained shirts.  PHEW!  We both still have a lot of purging left to do with our clothes . . . someday.  LOL

Well, now that I've rambled, I'll show you some of the setup I had that was kind of working . . . for now.

This roll-top computer desk sits on the wall opposite the foot of our bed.  My closet is to the right of this.

The first door on the left is my closet door.  The middle door is the entry door and the door on the right is Ryan's closet.

---

The thing I don't have a picture for is the full head-of-the-bed wall.  I had kept the end tables to our old bedroom set but they were too wide for here so I had been using them sideways.  Not pretty, but making do with what I had.  I kept an eye out on Kijiji for a set that would fit but no luck.  I found out that Wicker Emporium had a huge sale on so I called in the off-chance there may be something that would fit my space AND my budget.  It was my lucky day!

The 'old' end tables.  I sold them last week on a Facebook group.  (I turned them the proper way to take the picture, but the closet door wouldn't open with it set this way)

My new end tables from Wicker Emporium!  I got them on clearance for $95 each plus tax! Whoop!  We love them!

---

Anyway, back to clothes storage.  We finally got Logan's room set up a week or so ago and ended up taking the bookcase out of our room and into his.  (That bookcase moved from the end of the hall to our room and now to Logan's room.  I think its found its place now, though.)  Not only does it look sparse on that one wall in our room now, but I've faced that just one chest of drawers is not working for us.  I don't want to do a second chest of drawers for two reasons.  One, it would be super hard to find another like this one to do over to match.  Secondly, it would look dumb having no dresser at all and two chest of drawers side by side . . . . in my opinion.

So.  I have been watching the last week or so for a good deal on a dresser.  The problem I've been finding is that most of them are very deep and that would crowd our room considerably.  I haven't found a decent dresser narrow enough so began searching out the possibility of buying new instead.  That, too, has proven difficult.  I found ONE second hand dresser that would fit my space and style and it is in Toronto on Kijiji.  That won't work.  So.  I was down to figuring out how I might be able to sweet talk Ryan into going to Toronto OR having to get a custom built dresser OR building one ourselves.

I found a couple of local builders and got a quote from one of them.  It was going to be fairly expensive.  Pretty much equivalent to getting a good quality one at a furniture store.  I'm too cheap for that so I started checking out Pinterest and YouTube about building a dresser.  Uh, no.  Way too much for me at this point in the game.  

Last night I stumbled upon The Plan!  I'm super excited about it.  I'm going to order 2 small solid unfinished pine chests from Ikea and build my dresser out of them, with a few tweaks.

They are only $39.99 each and shipping is only $27!  That's $106.98 plus tax.

I want the rustic industrial look so I'm going to combine a few ideas I found on Pinterest.  Here's a couple of examples of what putting two together looks like.

The information and tutorial about the Ikea hacks in both pictures above can be found by clicking on the picture itself.  I plan to follow the tutorials from both links to combine the two chests, to eliminate the "kick plate", and to trim out the drawers and sides.  (except, I won't be mitre cutting the corners of the trim)

I will paint or stain the trim black but will do a wood stain to match my end tables on the rest.

I also want to try aging the wood by wire brushing it first.

I will use handles like the ones on my new end tables and I want casters for 'legs'.  I may also add some metal in the corners of the drawers for more of that rustic industrial feel.  Here's another inspirational photo below (with link attached to the picture).

There was another Ikea hack option that I ruled out.  It was to get the Tarva 6-drawer chest.  That would eliminate the bother of attaching 2 together, creating a custom top, and cutting out the kick plate that the Rast has.  So why not do that, you ask?  It costs more.  The Tarva is $199 plus shipping of $139.  By buying the two Rasts, I'll be saving $231.02 plus tax!  That will go a long ways towards the casters for feet and the pull ring handles, which I wanted regardless, as well as take care of the added expense of the custom top.

And lastly, the reason I am going to do this right away is because I don't want to live with the clutter that a lack of storage creates.  I have decor items crowding on my desk top and dresser top that will be put on the finished dresser.  Clutter in the master bedroom is a huge no-no for many reasons.  I will 'borrow' from the kitchen fund and replace it after selling the current chest of drawers and more unneeded decor.