Before and After #7: Guest Room

One thing I've always wanted in a house was a comfortable, private place for guests. We have a lot of overnight house guests, usually at least one or two each month and sometimes many more, and I know everyone is a lot happier when they aren't sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. So we decided to have the kids share a room so we could dedicate one of our three bedrooms to guests, at least until the kids are older.

BEFORE

AFTER

We started, as always by tearing out the wall-to-wall carpet and removing the acoustic ("popcorn") ceiling. We also discovered that one wall was covered in a thin layer of cork so we spent several extra hours tearing off the cork and then scraping and sanding the wall underneath it. Dev covered the wall with several layers of plaster and the result is so perfect, it's as smooth as glass - I'm really tempted to plaster all of our interior walls to get that same smooth finish.

Then we added a little extra insulation everywhere it was needed before adding the new crown and base moulding and trim around the windows and doors.

 

After buying sixteen (!) different paint samples, we painted the room in Frazee's Seattle, a cool pale gray, with the same Valspar Subway Tile white trim we're using in the kids' room and elsewhere throughout the house.  We also replaced the awful fluorescent light fixture with a ceiling fan.

 

The old light fixture and popcorn ceiling

Just like in the children's room, we painted the built-in cabinet white, though here we painted the inside a bright jewel green (Valspar's aptly named Lovely Green). And if I wasn't already grateful to Suzan for painting the built-in in the children's room, I certainly am now - it took me weeks of painting to finish this cabinet.

 

 The raccoon hanging out in the closet while we build a custom shelf for him in the hallway
 

(The house came with a total of five built-ins - two we tore out, two more we painted white, and the last one in the back room, mercifully, we are leaving as-is. The choice is an aesthetic one - the unpainted wooden cabinet looks appropriately natural and rustic in an indoor/outdoor room with an exposed beam ceiling - but frankly, I don't think I have it in me to paint another built-in cabinet even if I wanted to.)

Finally we replaced the hardware on the built-in cabinet and all the outlets and switch covers and replaced the cheap plastic blinds with pale gold silk curtains backed by a set of blackout curtains.  Dev also installed an electrical outlet in the built-in desk part of the cabinet so guests can use it as a handy place to charge their phones.

 

Then, the fun part: decorating. We moved in a bed, a table, a nightstand, and a rug - plus I made a sort of second nightstand out of an antique steamer truck and added a chair I found for free on the curb and reupholstered (I originally wanted to use this fabric to make curtains but when I saw its price tag I decided to use it on the chair instead). 

Plus new bedding and finishing touches like a set of house keys, printed address cards, matches, tissues, some books and magazines, hangers, a nightlight, and a guest book.

 

  

 

We still haven't found just the right thing to put above the headboard, but I love the shelves we installed on the far wall to match the trim:

 

 

 

My newest piece of taxidermy, a quail

Some interesting items on the green built-in shelves:

 

A taxidermied mole,  two petrified fruits, and a tortoise shell.

Dev mounted this Figeater beetle he found in the yard.

 

Julie made this bronze casting of a beaver skull.

I found these antique photos of 1920s-era China in a junk stall in Shanghai.

We tried to decorate this room in a fairly neutral way with things like paint colors, etc. since when Beatrice inherits it later we'll have to re-do it all again anyway, but I think it should make the transition smoothly.

Beatrice helping us at the hardware store

 

The only thing left to do now is to we replaced the cheap hollowcore door with a nice solid wood door, but we'll do that as part of the hallway project we're working on now.  And someday we'll refinish the floor along with all the floors in the house, but that's a big project we probably won't tackle for several years at least.  So, at least for now, I think we can check the guest room off the list! Everyone is officially invited to come and stay in it (and use our soon-to-be-updated guest bathroom, too).