Sunday, August 4, 2013

Our Vintage Master Bedroom

The night before the Mad Men finale, we hosted a party for some of our friends that are Mad Men fans. Many of the folks had not seen our upstairs, so we straighten things up and let them come up and take a peek.  Since everything looked so nice, I decided to take some pictures.

We have lived in our house for almost 10 years and it has taken us about that amount of time to get it just how we wanted it.  We started with good bones.  The room had all of it's original woodwork in the blond stain and the hardwood floors were in good shape.

I found the reproduction banana leaf barkcloth and just loved it.  I decided that the colors in the barkcloth would set the color palette for the room.

Initially there were curtain rods over each window with big heavy curtains on them that extended past the windows quite a bit.  We took them down and decided to show off the blond woodwork around the windows.  We had flat panel barkcloth curtains made that could be hung on a tension rod inside the frame of each window.  We thought about doing roman shades but the cost for each flat panel was $25 and each Roman was $100.

The first piece of furniture we got was the Encore Dresser by Heywood Wakefield.  We bought it off Ebay from a guy in Arizona.  It has the original Wheat finish that is in very good shape.   The seller was coming up this way so he dropped it off for us. I love the small drawers and large mirror.



The small 3 tiered table under the window is a West Germany piece.  It is one of the first pieces of MCM furnite I ever bought.  I got it at an Antique Store in Milwaukee back in 1996.

When I started collecting in 1995, I was drawn to California pottery.  Over the years, I have picked up many pieces especially Hedi Schoop and Sascha Brastoff.  The figures on the dressers and 3 tiered table are all mostly Hedi Schoop.  The plates over the dresser and the tile on the side of the dresser are Sascha Brastoff.  The tile is a full signature piece which was a very exciting to find.



In the picture below, the grey pole lamp was a freebie from some new neighbors down the street that were going to throw it away.  The piece closest to the window is a Heywood Wakefield Desk Chest.  If you pull on the top handle it drops down and could be used as a desk.  I use it as my nightstand.  I got it off of Ebay as well.  The seller had refinished it with a Heywood Wakefield stain you can buy off of Ebay.  It is a pretty good match color wise.  The finish is not as smooth as a professional job but it is ok.

We wanted a bench at the end of the bed.  We went to a sale where they were selling used hotel furniture. We found a cheap but comfortable bench that had terrible fabric on it. Since we had some of the barkcloth left over we decided to have the bench recovered.

We have a California King so I have never been able to find a good vintage bedspread.  So I got a new one that tied into the colors of the banana leaves.  The shams were a find on ebay as well and it was great as they were already made and in our fabric.

The dresser is Encore Heywood Wakefield.  We found it along with some other pieces at the Elkhorn Flea market.  All the pieces had been painted white.  We got an excellent deal on them because of that.  We then took all the pieces down to Springdale to have them refinished.  Springdale did an AMAZING job on the pieces.  It is a shame they are not around any more as their work was always excellent.  More Hedi Schoop pieces sit on top along with a small collection of blue spaghetti poodles.


I love vintage costume jewelry so I have found a way to combine it with the ceramic pieces I have.  The two lamps  on the dresser came from the first auction we ever went to back in 1995.  We got to the auction at 8am and of course our items didn't come up until 4:30.  But they were worth the wait.



We love our bedroom.  The only real issue is that dusting is quite the endeavor!!!  Any decorating article I read says you should surround yourself with things you love.  We are very fortunate to have a room that fills us with joy in every corner.

Rebecca

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