Guesting Game

Want to know what i did at the beginning of December? Had five daiquiris. I also made over the guest room. Our tiniest bedroom that fits a queen bed and little else. Here's a look around of how it looked before:

I ultimately had to dismantle that desk and put it under the bed for storage. It's just too big for the space. Until i have my own official sewing table, i'll just have to cart everything to the dining room table. The filing cabinet (used for crafty storage) is now in the closet.

We found the dresser below in the garage when we bought the place. It was a new Ikea MALM dresser, which happens to be the same kind we already have for both kids, just in different colors. And as we're in the process of making some changes in Daughter's room, i switched out her dresser drawers for the "new" color (pics of the other dresser will come with her room reveal). Here's how it looks on this dresser:

That was our guest room. A purple-on-purple room that, when we moved in, had no overhead lighting and a chair rail. Which one of you will be the one to explain why there's a chair rail in this room? Did the former owners have fancy dinners in here? Now, i do realize that my daughter's room currently has a chair rail and it stayed for two reasons: 1. Because we were in a rush to get in the house and painting was the extent of the time we were willing to spend on it and 2. because it's big enough to have a chair rail for decor instead of function. In my opinion, splitting such a small room in half makes it look even smaller. 

The first step was to rip it off the wall with a box cutter (score it) and a hammer (pry it).

 Afterward, i had to get at it with a scraper to peel off the caulk that was stuck to the wall.

After scraping comes the spackling. And i'm talking thick spackle...it was ridiculous. I'd spackle, spackle again, sand, then spackle one more 'gain, then sand one last time.

Once the room was prepared, it came time for the best part: picking a color! I thought for a minute i'd be super rebel and go with a jewel tone as those seem to look best in smaller rooms. Then i remembered that i kind of hate our jewel-toned dining room. It makes me feel uneasy and i don't like being in there, but i DO like waking up to thunderstorms (fun fact), so i'd go with something storm-cloudy. I picked Behr's Rocky Mountain Sky. It's pretty much one shade darker than the master bedroom  -Valpar's Gravity, which is almost exactly like Behr's Light French Gray.

After only an hour and a half of painting and an hour and a half of trimming the next day, Chris offered to hang the room divider on the wall over the bed as opposed to having it just sitting behind the bed like so:

The first step was to remove the hinges that held it together:

 The second step was to involve this sexy little canister:

 ...which helped make these holes...

 ...a tiny bit less noticeable.

 Step three: hang 'em.

I also moved the bed over so there's floor access on both sides, and put in Daughter's old bookcase as a nightstand. The room still isn't finished as we need a window panel (which i'll make) and a few mirrors to get it to be where i think it should be. But here's where the room ended up:

I'm currently on the hunt for a mirror that can go above the dresser. And here's a close-up of some of the artwork. This is a VW ad i found in a magazine in college that i outlined with some color. It hit pretty close to home and reminds me of good times with my roommates and i'll never throw it away...never ever.

Chairs in bedrooms are never really used for any other purpose than as a catch-all. And i will eventually put a large mirror on the lightswitch wall near the chair.

Extreme close-up! Some artist in Myrtle Beach is $20 richer for this completely inaccurate caricature, but it reminds us of good times.

 This is the view from the bed. I thrifted that clock for $3. High five, Self.

That piece of trash on the wall is actually something i made. I took some wrapping paper - the kind you get at the store when you buy fragile things - and used black acrylic paint to paint on the lyrics of two of my favorite romantic songs. The songs are on two sheets each, and those sheets are diagonal from each other. I hot glued them in a wrinkly fashion to a piece of euca board, then mod podged the whole thing after the fact. So it feels more like plastic than it does paper, and will hopefully hold its shape and not yellow.

 

I'll leave you with these Before & Progress pics: