My master bedroom was feeling pretty bare but cluttering it up wasn’t going to help. The place needed a serious overhaul.
I began scouring the internet for bedroom sets that would fit my bare master bedroom with some style.
I’m not an Ikea guy, I don’t want any recycled presswood furniture made in China. I wanted American made quality that lasts forever. That’s getting harder to come by these days.
All the custom bedroom sets I could find look dwarfed in a big master bedroom with tall ceilings and they were priced between $8,000 and $10,000 for nothing all that inspiring.
Disproportionate scale between a big room and comparatively short bedroom furniture frustrated me to the point of designing my own.
So I designed and built my own master bedroom set to fit my ten foot ceiling and to achieve my desire for an 1800s East India Company inspired style that has a British Colonial, Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, and somewhat Steampunk vibe to it. That design took a month to finalize with finite dimensions.
It had to have that fusion of character, embodied by aesthetic details of that industrial period without being kitschy – but be totally functional.
Within that aesthetic, it still had to subtly fit today’s technology in an organic way that’s not out of place with the analogue.
Above all, it had to comfortably fit my country lifestyle.
Because I often read and write in bed at night, I wanted my books and notebooks close and I wanted reading lights to set the mood. All the lighting had to be warm incandescent Edison style lights.
I also watch TV in bed so I wanted places to lay my remote, a tea mug or shot glass, depending on whether I want a nightcap or I’m trying to stay awake reading, writing or designing.
But integrating nightstands into bookshelves is not easy because you have to be able to reach them. I needed to support several hundred pounds of books over them.
Whatever I did was going to block them from reach. But I sketched out some ideas until it became apparent that the nightstands would be a fusion between a nightstand and a large cubby.
Below the nightstand is a long, pull out drawer.
Below the drawer is a cabinet with a swing out door, upholstered in the same heavy Damask fabric as the headboard and backrest. There are no knobs or handles on that low cabinet so there’s nothing to snag your pajamas to trip you to the floor in the dark.
The nightstands needed lighting, and if I’m running power there, then a 115VAC outlet to recharge my phone would naturally fit in there. I went with a bulkhead light because it needed to take a few hits without breaking. I had to rework it to match the color of the surrounding brass plates.
The brass plates are really interesting. They’re actually covers for the electric bays, above the nightstands, where the electric wires for the switches and outlets are all connected and distributed.
On the port side brass plate, I installed a brass barometer and hygrometer, each flanking a Google NEST Gen 3 learning thermostat, which controls the climate of my master bedroom.
Since this wall unit would cover my existing thermostat and make it inaccessible, the gauges on the brass plate were my solution. It’s almost like a crystal ball mounted between the analogue gauges. Aesthetically, it works beautifully.
The switches for the recessed ceiling lights and ceiling fan would be covered too so I had to build them into the design, on the side, where the new switch box and the existing switch box would all fall within the dimensions of the Port side electric bay. All the wiring would be hidden, yet still serviceable behind the brass plate, held on by six brass screws.
On the Starboard side brass cover plate, I installed a brass clock and thermometer with a Google Home Mini Assistant speaker in the middle, mounted behind a wire fan guard.
Now I can call on the Home Mini to answer all kinds of questions and verbally set the NEST thermostat.
The wiring bay holds the same wiring connections, but includes a concealed, switchable outlet for the Google Home Mini Assistant speaker, switchable from an antique toggle switch mounted on the brass cover plate. Sometimes, you need to shut off any listening devices for privacy.
On the bed side of each electric bay is a long, caged Edison light for reading, controlled by old-school rheostat brass dimmer switches. They’re on both sides of the bed, in case you have a companion who wants to read her books too.
Another requirement for reading in bed, or watching TV, was an angled backrest to eliminate jamming several folded pillows behind my head. That’s literally a pain in the neck.
With the angled backrest, one pillow behind your head doesn’t move and is amazing in its comfort. The angle and height are perfect, even when sleeping flat and trying to find a comfortable place to lay your arm, its perfection is truly outstanding in its comfort.
Above the backrest, there’s a ledge where I can safely lay the TV remote, a mug or my reading glasses so I can quickly find them without digging through the sheets to find the remote.
Above that ledge is the headboard, upholstered in the same, heavy Damask fabric as the backrest and lower nightstand cabinets.
I keep pens and a writing pad on the nightstand, my phone charger and a coaster for my morning coffee. There’s an old-school bottle opener mounted inside the cubby, in case I want to open a cold beer while watching a movie on the wall mounted, big screen TV.
And I keep a pistol for anything that might go bump in the night.
Above the electric bays are long, tall industrial cabinets with steel cage doors. Both cabinets have three levels of storage. The upper two shelves are removable to configure the cabinets for storing tall objects.
The Starboard side cabinet has a rack for three rifles or three shotguns. The unused shelves are stowed out of sight, on top of the bookshelves.
The bookshelves span the width of the bed. The 14 inch tall bottom shelf is rated for a 300 pound load, sitting on parallel 2x4s with a 3/4 inch shelf surface. That’s a lot of heavy, hardback books and vinyl LP records.
The two 10 inch tall shelves above that are rated for a 200 pound load each, sitting on parallel 2x3s with 3/4 inch shelf surfaces. The crown surface on top is built just as the shelves, also able to bear a 200 pound load, in case you want to display any artifacts of interest.
At full weight capacity, the sixteen vertical 2x4s, which are integral with the nightstands, easily bear the entire load. The nightstands themselves act as proportionate feet to prevent the bookshelves from ever toppling forward. A wall anchor is recommended in earthquake country.
The crown moulding across the top brings the cabinets and bookshelves together as one. The two Edison lamps on top throw a warm, diffused, indirect light effect across the ceiling.
Under my ten foot ceiling, this eight foot tall wall unit looks proportionate with a normal height king size bed. I can still sit on the edge of the bed with my feet flat on the floor so I don’t feel like a Munchkin with my feet dangling from a ridiculously high sitting king size mattress, compensating for a big, tall master bedroom. I didn’t want a step stool to climb into bed at night.
I hand-crafted this integrated master bedroom set with its unique, East India Trading Company style in six weeks. I built it out of the best Pine lumber available in southern Arizona and deliberated over every part that I selected.
Ultimately, everything came together as designed without any reworking or mistakes. Designing it all on my computer eliminated any flaws in dimensions and load bearing issues. Building it was just a procedural matter of building parts and assembling them.
I still plan to replace a few items. First, the two wood nightstand table top surfaces will be replaced with dark green or black granite or marble. Finding the right 18×24 inch remnant pieces is going to take some time to source.
Second, I’ll be upgrading the switches and wall plate with antique push button light switches with the appropriate wall plate.
I had to put off buying and installing those two luxuries for a while because the cost of lumber just keeps going up and I’ve still got other projects to produce.
My East India Trading Company inspired bedroom set is the embodiment of a warm, cozy bed that fills a large, tall bedroom with a timeless style with the same childhood magic you once found, holding a flashlight under a blanket tent, watching an old time Creature Feature on late night TV or reading a book that captured your imagination.
For a few thousand dollars more than a mass produced presswood bedroom set, your bedroom can be an inspiring place to dream again and this American made design will last you a lifetime.
If you would like to commission me to build one for you, contact me at www.arnettranch.com by going to the menu at the top of this page and select “Home” and put “East India Company” in the subject line of your email so I know it’s an enquiry.
Thanks for reading this far!