Jesse Joyner, PhD

Here are some BEFORE, MIDDLE, and AFTER shots (in reverse order above, so the bottom picture is “before”, and so on) of the master bedroom in the new 85-year-old house Sarah and I bought last June. It’s been fun working on it. This is the first major room completion, and it now gives Sarah hope that my work is better than “boy scoutish”, which is what she was afraid of going into this. I still have a ton to learn about DIY home restoration, but I think this first room came out pretty good.

First, we were able to pull this off on a cheap budget. Here are the major costs of the master bedroom (estimated):

Ceiling Fan – $150
Paint and Supplies – $150
Floor Sanding and Refinishing – $250
Electrical Rewiring/Updating – $20
Two Joyner-Made Night Stands – FREE (from scrap wood!)
Misc Supplies (all-purpose compound, nails, etc.) – $25
Period Doors and Hardware – $100
Original Transom and Hardware (ours was missing, so we bought one from a neighbor with the same house dimensions – they didn’t want it) – $45
One happy wife – priceless

The last major piece in the room is the window, which we’ll tackle when we either restore or replace all the windows in the house at once.

We already had all the other furniture to put in the new room, so that brings the total for a nice new master bedroom to $740! Paying people to do all the above would have been in the thousands.