Starting work on guest room–before pictures + new paint

Nothing like having guests coming to move tackling the guest room to #1 on the list.   I work harder and faster when I have a deadline so this was great motivation to work on getting to phase 1 in this room. 

Here’s the room when we closed on the house.  Purple accent wall, light purple paint, missing socket covers, tv cable run through the baseboards…  Seriously you want to just say why??  

and a wood shelf hung randomly on the wall.

We have 3 bedrooms downstairs and an above the garage bonus room that has a closet so can be considered a bedroom.  Because of switching things around with this new arrangement (and a new baby who needed her own room ), this room will serve as our guest room and also our little nephews room when he stays with us several days a week.  In our previous house our 2 nieces used the room we used as a guest room – but they get the upstairs loft/bonus room this time!   So that meant lots of switching around with furniture as you will see with bedroom arrangements in this house.

My nephew was not too thrilled at all with that Barney purple wall – I think he asked me every day for a week as soon as the day after we closed if I had painted over it yet.   So I made sure this was one of the rooms that I painted in the 2.5 weeks I had between closing and my due date.   We started out with basically just setting it up as I had our spare bedroom set up at the last house – you can see that room here.  But my goal was to find another single bed frame, purchase another twin mattress and move both twin beds upstairs and the full/queen bed down here in this room for guests.  Later in the summer I found a twin bed frame for $5 at a yard sale and purchased a mattress and rearranged these rooms.  So we were getting closer to getting this room set up!

I ended up just using a can of grayish paint I had in the garage to paint this room and wasn’t happy with the color – it is more bluish/purple than a true gray.  So at some point this room will get repainted.  But at least that purple wall is gone! The bed and yard sale headboard from my last guest room is in here and I just added some navy pillows I had used in our spare room at our last house. 

Took these pictures before Christmas because I wanted to get to work rearranging in here, hence the Christmas tree. 

The crates turned bookshelf/nightstand worked fine in our spare bedroom last time but for guests I really wanted to find something more substantial. 

And this painted dresser got some scuffs and scratches in the move so needs to be repainted or touched up. 

I stole the other two IKEA shelves that I had used in our spare bedroom at our old house for our baby girls nursery, leaving this room with no storage for toys or books.  So I picked up this BHG Cube Organizer at Walmart since Ikea was out of white for a while and I didn’t want to make the trip.  I love these organizing shelves – they are so functional and you can use baskets and bins to create hidden storage.  I found the Threshold navy/white bins all brand new from Target at a yard sale for $15 for all 4 – crazy deal since they usually sell for $10 each. 

I plan to create a gallery wall or a grouping of wall hangings on this wall.  And the little table and chairs was another yard sale find.  I knew I would eventually want one for our little girl for a craft/school table in my office so she can be in there with me, but knew if I found one now my nephew could use it for a while for legos and coloring until she was ready.  I found this one for $15 off a facebook yard sale site – it’s actually this Pottery Barn table and chairs set and solid wood!  It needs a new coat of paint or stain so that’s on the agenda too. 

My vision or goal for this room is a navy, white, gray color scheme with a bit of an industrial farmhouse type look.  I have the finished product in mind but some of that will have to wait for phase 2 where I can spend more time adding some trim and character into the room.  For now though I can get all the furniture painted and arranged and work on decor for phase 1. 

So there’s the after of new paint and moving our stuff in and the before of getting this bedroom really set up.  Hanging curtains, rearranging, finding a nightstand, painting the dresser, painting the table and chairs, hanging stuff on walls, and decorating are the next step.  I’ve been busy painting so I’ll show you the first project later this week!