Before and After Party: The Guest Room

Hey there! I hope you had a wonderful weekend! We had a great one…until a major DIY disaster hit. :) I’m smiling about it now (barely) but it’s taken a while for the twitching to stop.

I’ll show you more about that soon (you’ll understand why I’m holding off when I show you). GAH.

Anyhoo, a guest room redo has been on my radar for about two years now. Basically since stepdaughter went off to college.

It looked like this for years:

My stepdaughter picked out the design and colors and I said let’s go for it! Her and her girlfriends helped me paint it back when they were wee ones in middle school.

But now it’s more of a guest room, and I feel bad EVERY time we have someone come stay.

Pink, blue and purple doesn’t exactly scream come rest and relax in your home away from home. ;)

So I’ve been meaning to do this for so long, but I was waiting for inspiration to hit me. I kept picking out paint samples and swatches, but nothing felt right. I just didn’t know where I wanted to go with it.

I want a lush, comfy, hotel-feel, but still comfortable. I kept thinking a deep grey would look fab on the walls. I know grey is totally trendy right now, but I’ve had this little swatch of paint up for about 18 months:

I’m so trendy I’m trendy after the trend hits. Yeah. Or maybe that makes me not trendy at all. Whatever. :)

Well, I just wasn’t feeling the greys I was picking out. So I decided to practice what I preach and wait for the inspiration to strike in the form of bedding or drapes.

I waited. And waited.

Waited some more.

Twiddled my thumbs.

Hummed a tune.

Crickets.

Then I kind of gave up. The pink and blue and purple needs to go and I was tired of waiting around. So I went with white bedding:

 

I found that lovely quilt set at TJ Maxx, and LOVED it. But it still needed something more…and the next trip into the Maxx delivered this beautiful duvet:

Ahhh, people! It had finally happened! (Just ignore the wrinkles.) Good. NESS. It took forever. But something had finally struck my fancy.

I wasn’t sure how it would look with the quilt, but I love it!:

Ack! I just think it is gorgeous!

I pulled a deep grey out of the duvet for the sheet color:

But white sheets will work great too.

And I’ll be – look what was waiting for me on my NEXT trip into TJ Maxx:

Perfect!

I know it sounds like I frequent the place at least daily, but I don’t. Swear. Really.

(And no, all seven pillows won’t stay. At least I don’t think. I promise nothing.)

Just like that, the room was ready for a redo!

I’m back to my idea of the grey walls, but there are so many beautiful tones to pick from!:

   

I’d like to pull one out of the bedding, but there’s two different tones of the grey. At first I was going darker because this room gets so much natural light, but now I’m leaning toward a lighter one.

Hmmmm…we will see, we will see! :)

You’ll notice I moved the bed:

I know it’s bad feng shui to have it situated like this, but over the past year or so, I’ve been using this room as my “sewing” room, since it has such great light.

And when I say “sewing” room, I really mean “iron and hemming tape” room – but more on that later. :)

Anyway, the end of the bed is my perch when I work on fabric projects, and I like the set up this way, but who knows if it will stay.

Other than painting, I plan on making a beautiful upholstered headboard, adding crown, painting the ceiling, adding some window treatments and painting the dresser that used to be in the Bub’s room:

I’d like to tackle that chair too, but we’ll just see how ambitious I am. :)

Now I need to figure out what to do with this big honkin’ checkered wall:

It won’t stay checkered, obviously.

But I did think it could be cool to keep with the same idea and do some molding along the lines of what I did in the playroom:

I have no idea what I’m doing yet – I’m sure I’ll see some ideas in my head the more I work the space!

Let’s hope. That’s the way it usually works anyway. :)

So that’s the short list folks – I’m just SO thrilled to have the biggest part done with the bedding. That’s the hardest part for me!

I shared how I (try) to start a room redo over at Beth’s place today – go check it out!:

I’ll be back with some fun projects – they were derailed by my DIY mishap this weekend but I’m persevering!! :)

OMG people – I totally forgot about the Before and After Party! My brain is missing, I swear. Well, this post kind of works, so let’s DO it!!

Here’s my before and after for this month:

A little underwhelming at this point…but it’s progress!!

Link it up!