Beach Bedroom...first edition

It is back down the beach for today's blog post! Time to show off the changes we've made to upstairs of our beach condo over the five years of our ownership.

I feel like I have to make an obligatory disclaimer here, the condo is a summer rental and is a extra drain on our twenty something finances. Please don't think this is some sort of cash cow condo, we pay a mortgage on the place and while the rental income helps so much the condo does not come close to "paying for itself"during the season. That being said, is the reason why condo doesn't look exactly as the beach home in my dreams because of the rental and financial roadblocks. We try to make the condo look as good as possible with a combination of DIY ability, frugal design and durability. Sorry, I have this insane need to explain myself all the time... ( and to why our beach condo isn't design magazine ready)

The bedroom was in dire need of a makeover. Looking past the outdated all baby blue interior there was a window that wouldn't open at all and was completely salt film encrusted which created a haze all over the glass. Even on the most lovely of sunny spring days you couldn't even tell because it just looked gloomy inside the room because of the hazy window. Every exterior window and door down there needs to be hurricane rated, so we got the name of a trust worthy glass guy and made an appointment to get the window replaced.

What a difference the new window made! Sunshine! Breeze! No more horrible whistling sound every time the wind blew by....The new window kicked up the desire to redo the rest of the bedroom, so we made that our Fall 2008 project.

Kicking off the project we started with addressing the fact that the room is a big ol' boring rectangle. We wanted to come up with something that would help to add character to our 1984 condo construction. At first we debated adding stripes to the room, but then nixed that idea quickly when we couldn't quite figure out how to stripe the room- all the room? horizontal? vertical? We decided on adding an accent wall of color on the window wall, to help draw your eye toward the window and break up the longer side walls. As an extra touch and to everything look a little more finished we choose to trim out the window and all the doors in the room. Using the trim blocks we were able to "cheat" and didn't have to miter any corner cuts.

To keep with the colors downstairs we decided to once again to draw inspiration from the beach with the sand and sea but to keep it neutral and from screaming "BEEEEAAACCCCCHHHHH" A new flush mount fan got hardwired to the ceiling properly, unlike the previous fan which was haphazardly stuck on up there. For us ceiling fans are a must have down at the beach. Nothing is better than letting the cooler salt air circulate around a house and the place can get kinda stifling without a breeze sometimes

We replaced the horrible mattresses, both were horrible 5" thick motel special, with a new full size from Ikea and our Queen mattress from home. Despite the hilarity that was us carrying up and then pulling a queen mattress through the window of the bedroom from the deck below, it was worth all the effort! Blissful wonderful sleep now belonged to us and our guests.


In order to free up some floor space we took out one of the worlds heaviest and ugliest dressers. The second one stayed in the room as a place holder for a little while longer. We found the little tv table labeled as a coffee table in the Ikea Last Chance section.

At this point the budget was tapped out and we still had the ugly blue carpet left staring us back in the face. Even though we really wanted to tear it out and replace it then we had to wait. It would be annoying to do so because the carpet was pretty gross. The best solution for that was to steam clean it and just hope that was enough to help get it through another year.