We’ve Finally Landed on a Layout Upstairs

This post has been such a long time coming my friends. We’ve known since the day we bought this house that we were going to need to tweak the layout of the bedrooms, closet and ensuite to better suit our family and I swear, it’s been rolling around my head every day since.

Let me start from the beginning here.

When this house was originally built back in ’88, that big “guest bedroom” (pictured at the back of the house above) was actually two separate bedrooms, each with it’s own window bench and closet – the bedroom on the left (closest to the primary bedroom) belonged to my husband and the one on the right was his sister’s room (Carson is currently sleeping in his Uncle Cory’s old room at the front of the house until we’re done renovating these spaces). Eventually, all three kiddos grew into teenagers, the boys moved to bigger bedroom spaces elsewhere in the house and my Mother-in-law took down the wall between the bedrooms to give my sister-in-law a larger room like her brothers. It worked perfectly for them all. Fast forward to 2022 with a new Mercer clan in the house and we just done’t have a need that big double bedroom. Brady and I knew right away that we’d be putting that old wall back up to separate that space back into the two bedrooms it had been originally. It felt pretty simple & straight forward.

We also knew the primary bathroom needed some renovating ASAP (I couldn’t even bring myself to walk on the carpet in there). And, as long as we were going to be ripping things out, we might as well rework the layout in there as well. As you can see in the floor plan above, the primary bathroom and closet had a pretty odd layout, walking in past the tub and around the corner to get to the (really tiny) vanity. On top of that, I really didn’t love the idea of showering inside my closet – the whole thing just felt really weird to me. We figured we’d keep it fairly simple and move things around a bit to create a more functional layout, hopefully build a wall between the bathroom and closet, maybe even bump out the bathroom wall into the bedroom for a bit more space. Still, things felt fairly simple & straight forward.

But then, as so often happens around here, I had another idea.

What if we were to move our closet to the other side of the room, taking over some space from that big guest bedroom on the other side of the wall? It would give us a MUCH bigger ensuite, a MUCH bigger closet and, since we were already having to build that wall to turn that one bedroom back into two, it really wouldn’t be that much more work aside from adding a door between our bedroom and that future closet. We aren’t really in need of an extra bedroom space, but a bigger closet and ensuite, now that is definitely something we could use! Even more, since we don’t really need a closet the size of a bedroom, we could give some of that extra square footage to Carson to make his bedroom a little bigger. There was really no question that this was the way to go.

I got straight to work drawing up all sorts of ideas and plans for ways that we could create these new spaces. My sister-in-law, Emily, (an interior/exterior designer by trade) jumped right in to it all too, sharing all sorts of inspiration and drawing up all sorts of things that I hadn’t even thought of. And somewhere in the excitement of it all, I started to feel a bit stuck. With an endless list of possibilities, landing on the perfect layout started to feel really daunting. And so, I just sat with it for a few months. Every once in a while I’d pull out our stack of drawings and play around with different ideas, but nothing really jumped out at me. I decided to just step away from it all through the holidays and honestly didn’t give it any time or energy through most of November or December.

Luckily, with the holidays behind us and a new year ahead, I started to feel that itch to jump back into it all once again (if only to get on with the rest of the renovations). Brady and I talked through some of our favourite layout options, running through all of the things we loved and hated about each one, what we thought would work well, what might need reworking. Once we’d landed on some ideas, we pulled out our painter’s tape to tape it all out and help us really visualize everything. Where would the walls be? Did our shower feel too tight? Was C’s closet big enough? Should we add a few more inches here or a lose a few over there? Where would the furniture go in each space? Taping it out didn’t just help us visualize it all, we were able to actually walk through each space, making sure every little nook would function the way we wanted it to.

And now, I think we may have finally landed on a winner (I say think here, because I do anticipate a few small tweaks as we get rolling with things). Are you ready to see what we’ve come up with?

You can see in the layout above, we’ve moved around a few walls, added in a few more and totally reworked our primary bedroom, ensuite, and closet. We also managed to squeeze a walk-in closet and desk nook in for Carson, which he’s very excited about! He’s been working on some big plans for his room and I cannot wait to share them. You can catch a sneak peek of the plans he drew up for his Auntie Emily below. It’s been so fun dreaming up all the things with him to make his room extra special.

Now that we’ve got the layout of everything figured out, I’m SO excited to finally get planning the design of all of these spaces! Hoping I’ll have some design plans and mood boards to share with you soon!

Wishing you SUCH a lovely day my friends!
 

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