Our House Renovations–Master Bedroom Suite

 

This is the third in a series of planned posts on our house renovations, the first one was Our House Renovations - Kitchen which I posted back in July in conjunction with the start of The Dishwasher Saga which incidentally is still on going.  Yes I know somewhat unbelievable, but the engineers eventually heard from Wega and they sent yet another new part to be fitted, something to do with the door this time. However it did not work and now although we can use the dishwasher if we wish it only works with a chair jammed against it and of course it still tends to leak! The engineers by this stage were as fed up as us and have now finally got Wega to agree to replace the Dishwasher. So this is the good news as regards that saga in our life, three weeks we have been waiting for this replacement so goodness knows just how long it will take to arrive. I will let you know when it does!

The second post about the renovations was Our House Renovations - Guest Suite

We completed on the purchase of this property back in February 2009 but as those of you who have been reading my Newsletters and Blog that long will know we have had a lot of work to do. You can read all about it in Archive Blogs of News From Italy but as I wrote then, when we first moved we had no internal staircase, no kitchen, ancient flooring, bathrooms to move, electric wiring and plumbing to be replaced. With a few limitations a blank canvas to work with once all the necessary permissions were in place and this controlled the pace that we were able to work at. The geometra that we worked with was an excellent guide where all the protocol was concerned but it was considered somewhat unusual that my husband and a friend were tackling this renovation themselves.

This third post is to show our transformation of two adjoining rooms from a room that was used as a bedroom, although you had to walk through it to get to the next room, which was used as an upstairs sitting room. It is this pair of rooms that we have converted into a Master Bedroom Suite for our own use.

First photo is the bedroom that we decided to split and make our en suite bathroom at the far end, with the area we walk through into a dressing room area specifically for me. I have never had so much wardrobe space all to myself before, no need to pack away clothes with the seasons any more, bliss.  Italian fitted wardrobes can be double height hanging as the ceilings are so high here.

The dressing room and bathroom was where the most work had to be done, walls built, plastering, painting, tiling floors, tiling bathroom walls and bathroom fittings installed.

Walls to hide the bathroom area.                                         Mosaic tiles for the floor – never again!                           

Tiling of walls all done and bathroom fittings going in.                                 Detail on the black tile in the border.         

Walls plastered and painted. Floor tiles getting grouted.                 My very feminine choice of wardrobe being constructed

So now for photos of the finished rooms, white in the bathroom with black tiles with a hint of pink and the deep pink glass basin while the dressing room area is grey and pink!  I know very brave choice, love or hate, I love it as it lifts what would otherwise be a very dark room as it only has a small window at this end.

We used the same tiles as the bathroom on the windowsill in the dressing room and my husband also renovated the original internal shutter.

Our bedroom which is through the door next to my dressing table was a much easier transformation as it is a fairly modern extension of a large room with fireplace and balcony built over what was when we arrived a garage, now a laundry room.  A coat of paint, mosquito blinds, new furniture and this is what we have transformed it into.

 

I have only included a selection of the renovation photos from this part of the project in this post, the full album entitled Master Bedroom Suite can be viewed at My Flickr Account if you are interested in seeing more photographs of the transformation.