Ten years – My Second Floor Master Suite

Our second floor master suite. One of the first certainties before I started the renovation was that the second story of this home was going to be my master suite. Its only a half story, meaning its a glorified attic space. At 500 square feet (minus the stairwell) its not a big space. But having a real “master suite” that’s on its own private floor makes me feel all kinds of spoiled. I chose my favorite room in the entire house for the bedroom. But, in hindsight and weirdly enough, I really wish I hadn’t done that now. Or, at least, I wish I had at least THOUGHT about it during the renovation.

I remember working so hard on this second story suite in my home designer program and I never once remember swapping the two rooms.

Like it wasn’t even an option!

The stairwell sits on the North side of the load bearing wall cutting three feet into the Northern bedroom making it the smallest of the two rooms.

Looking back on it now I really wish I had made the “bedroom” out of the smaller room. It would have just perfectly fit a king bed and been so much quieter and so much more private feeling than the larger room.

Everything I love about the bigger room is why I didn’t even consider doing anything different than what I did.

Its South facing so in a house that is dark and shaded all of the time it is the room with the most light. Unfortunately though its also the room that faces the close-by, busy, dirt road and, frankly, a sunlit room isn’t exactly great for sleeping…

Its also the hottest room all summer long in the entire house. (Though that does make it the warmest room of the house in the winter…)

I read once that you should never put the head of your bed to the north, which is probably some old wives tail… but whatever. I did a bit of looking and here’s a pretty funny blog post from someone whose done way more research than I have about the whole thing.

Another reason the layout up here was a no brainer for me was because of the plumbing.

With the bathroom in the smallest room it was directly above the kitchen, which was directly above the well room in our basement. So all I had to do with the plumbing was go straight up.

If I had put the bathroom in the Southern room I would have had to reroute all of the plumbing around / through the load bearing wall in soffits in the living room.

Totally doable but also a lot more work.

In the end this is where we’re at and I still love this space though it does pain me to think it could have been THAT much better designed layout wise.

Though it really is only because of the bedroom. I have no complaints with our bathroom or walk through closet just as they are.

However, they would have been bigger and no one has ever complained about a bigger bathroom or closet!

Making this a master suite (or really a usable space in any way) started with ripping out the staircase and making it almost twice as long.

The last renovation my grandparents’ made to this home was to enclose part of the screened in porch to make themselves a main floor bedroom. Their two girls were getting older and really needed their own spaces and I’m sure my grandparents were ready for some privacy as well.

The staircase was as close as it could be to a ladder and still be considered a staircase. It was dangerous for anyone but especially a couple of folks who were getting older.

The stairwell is still pretty narrow but I made the decision during the renovation to leave the two load bearing walls on either side of it alone.

There haven’t been a ton of changes up here since I moved in back in 2015 besides moving the bed to the East wall.

I think as far as looks (and even sleeping-wise) the bed under the windows probably made the most sense but I much prefer it here as it provided one more spot for a piece of furniture.

When you’re dealing with a half story places for furniture is a big deal!

With the bed where it is it meant we could have both dressers plus two end tables in the bedroom which we use every day.

Future changes focus in the bathroom.

Someday I would really like to take out our fiberglass shower and replace it with a custom tiled shower.

There’s a little more space we could grab from both sides of the shower to make it a little bigger and I think a white subway tile up here would be just lovely and so fitting for this home.

Its not just the little bit of space we can grab from the room its also the fact that our specific shower is a lot smaller on the inside than it needs to be. Where the two (almost useless) little shelves are for storage the walls of the shower slide well into the space, using way more room than necessary.

So yeah, a bigger shower would be great!

Also I think a frameless glass shower door up here would be just lovely!

But you guys know how I am.

Is it a want or is it a need?

We already have a perfectly fine working shower so seeing us replacing it someday will probably be a LONG way off for this frugal chick lol.