A few months ago we completed our master bedroom makeover, and it’s my favorite room in the house. I like deep, dramatic colors in bedrooms. I want the room to envelop me and feel like it’s night time all day. We also have beautiful Art Deco furniture in there and lots of gold accents. The more I realized how much I loved the deep colors, historic feel, and gold accents, the more I wanted the WHOLE bedroom completed. So the master closet needed a little makeover itself!The master closet is shared by Ryan and I, but I don’t keep much of my clothes in there. I’m lucky enough to have a fabulous dressing room, so I only keep a dresser with underthings, pjs and workout clothes in the master closet. However, this is Ryan’s space that he stores his clothes and shoes that don’t fit into his dresser in the bedroom, so it is a well-utilized closet. We also have our hampers for dirty clothes in there, which is a project I’ll be working on soon (stay tuned!). We are extremely lucky to have a walk-in closet in a house this old, but it was feeling a little lack-luster in there. I firmly believe in every space deserving love and style, no matter how small.
The first order of business was painting the walls. I wanted the closet to be an extension of the bedroom, so I used the trim color from the bedroom on the walls of the closet. My original idea was to use a stencil on the window wall and layer the deeper blue onto the lighter blue, but then an idea popped into my mind…
For years I’ve loved the idea of a star covered, dark ceiling. It reminds me of the magical ceiling in Harry Potter and my favorite ceiling in the Louisville Cathedral back home. It’s dramatic, glitzy and brings the amazing universe into your space. I never had a good space to execute the idea, until now! I got working immediately on the idea, and splashed the deep blue onto the curved ceiling of the closet. At first, I contemplated making a star stencil to use, but then I remembered I have a huge role of gold vinyl in my craft pile. The lines would be crisp, no mistakes from paint and the vinyl stars would be removable.
I found three star designs to trace in my Silhouette cutting machine, and cut them on 12″x12″ sheets of gold vinyl. It was like being a child with lots of sticker sheets, putting them all over the ceiling. So fun! I didn’t stress too much on placement of the stars, I just tried to keep them evenly space out and in a similar pattern throughout. In all, I cut out 15 sheets of stars to put on this ceiling. I completed it by working on it for a few hours a day, for a 3 days. It took me that long because I was going back and forth on other projects too, and cutting out the stars on the machine as I went.
Before working on the fabulous star ceiling, Ryan was helping me fix my wonky shelf and closet rod. The previous owners put huge blocks of wood to hold up the shelf and rod, and it was only semi-functional. It was awkward and had actually cracked the shelf because it couldn’t lay flat. To fix this, we took it all down, made new wood brackets for the shelf, filled in all the holes made in the walls, and hung a new shelf. We had a to use a thicker piece of wood for my shelf bracket, to hide a mysterious circular hole in the wall (turns out is an old cut out for a stove pipe).
Once the shelf was complete, and both shelves painted to match the walls, I realized I needed to add some decorative trim. There was a rough plywood edge showing, that just didn’t look professional or finished.
Next I cleaned up the original milk glass light and gave it a refresh with some gold paint and an industrial light bulb. These little changes made it look so much better!
I went back and forth on ideas for the closet rods. I definitely wanted something nicer than the scratched metal rods, but I knew it would be expensive to get quality closet rods. I decided to take the plunge and paint them. It seems risky, but I’ve done the process before with great success. I previously painted our shower rod in the bathroom last year and it still looks great with no scratches. I follow this A Beautiful Mess tutorial to the letter if you want to try it yourself. I also painted the rod brackets gold for Ryan’s side, but I no longer had anything holding up my closet rod, so I purchased some inexpensive gold brackets.
My last project was a favorite of my friends on Instagram while I was painting it! I have a basic IKEA dresser that I painted black with glass knobs and it’s decent, but no wow factor. I really want an Art Deco armoire in there, but I thought I could jazz up my dresser for free in the meantime. I used some gold paint I had lying around and this stencil I had previously bought for the bathroom reno. This stencil emulates the bone inlay on bohemian furniture that is gorgeous but EXPENSIVE! The stencil gives you the look for a fraction of the price.
Instead of white, I decided to do gold and really glam it up. I put on tape on the stencil pieces and played around with a layout. I didn’t do any precise measuring, I just went for it. It’s such a detail design that you don’t see any time mistakes. I ended up loving this dresser so much now, that I don’t think I want to get an Art Deco dresser to replace it!
I had alot of fun making over this space, and I can’t wait to add the final layers. I didn’t spend a ton of money on this makeover, I had also all of the supplies. Sometimes just looking around the house and in your scrap piles can lead to a dramatic transformation!
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