Our New and Improved Guest Bedroom

You may remember a million years ago (read: back in April) when I posted about plans to give our guest bedroom a little facelift.  I intended for it to be a quick and fairly inexpensive endeavor.  And while we managed to keep the costs down, it was not a quick process at all.  What can I say?  I excel at procrastination! Anyway, it's finally done and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

We didn't do everything we intended, but we freshened it up a bit so I'm happy.  I didn't take the best "before" photos, but I think this still gives you an idea of what it looked like...

Notice the gross-beige yellow walls!  When we bought our house four years ago (as of September 2nd...yay, happy house anniversary to us!) nearly all the walls were this color.  I loathe this color.  Repainting the guest bedroom marked the end of the beige-yellow color in our house, yay!  Also, let's talk about that hideous bedspread/bed-in-a-bag for one second.  I bought that thing when I was in high school through a catalog.  I loved it at the time, but over the years it has just become more and more hideous to me!  But it's gone now, so I'm happy.

As you can tell, the guest room used to be a place for our spare crap and Antoine's poster collection...where occasionally a guest would stay, amongst the junk.  The door was always shut, so the cat wouldn't chew on said junk (Gui likes to chew on cardboard and wires laying around on the ground).  Because the door was always closed, the room sort of felt disconnected from the rest of the house and was regarded as an afterthought.  Part of my motivation for giving it a facelift was to open it up and have it become a true part of our house, instead of a storage room.  And, happily, it has...

The "after" shot.  A little brighter and hopefully a little more welcoming.

The walls got a fresh coat or two of paint (silver peony from Sherwin-Williams).  The bookshelf didn't change one bit.  I had originally hoped to relocate it to another wall in the room, but in the end it ended up looking best where it had been all along.  The rug, which originally I wasn't sure about, is really growing on me...and it's actually a really nice rug for $20, you can't beat that!  I'm in love with this little record stand (above right) I got from Urban Outfitters!  I wasn't originally going to get one right away, but it went on sale and there was free shipping so I jumped on it.  As you can tell from the "before" photos (top right and bottom left) my record player was originally just chilling out on the floor.

The desk was one of the bigger updates in the bedroom, but I've got a whole separate post about that coming up...so stay tuned.  The chair is another inexpensive find from Ikea.  Above the desk I hung a couple of my magnolia photos in a pair of Ribba frames.  I also matted, framed and hung two of Antoine's Rob Jones posters, one Raconteurs (seen here) and one White Stripes (which you can see in the first photo).  Antoine has a pretty great Rob Jones collection and it always satisfying for both of us when we can display more of them, since we love them so much!  Now we have Rob Jones items in our living room, dining room, upstairs hallway and guest bedroom.  If only we had more wall space!

Some details.  

The curtains: we ended up finding these at Home Goods/TJ Maxx for like $10 a pair.  Originally I didn't want to go with sheers, but in the end I like the amount of light they let in and the pattern still offers some privacy when they are pulled shut.  

The cranes:  they weren't part of my original plan, the idea just popped into my head at the last moment.  Several years ago I decided it would be fun to fold a thousand cranes out of any/all scrap paper I could find, so I did.  And for years they sat in boxes in closet (minus a couple at work and some hanging from friends and families rear-view mirrors).  That corner of the room was looking a bit empty so I found this handy tutorial (super glue...genius!) and made a little make-shift mobile near the window.

The print:  you might remember this print from my Crafty Supermarket post from April.  I adored it when I spotted it in Kelly's Etsy store, Burrowing Home, but once I got to Crafty and saw it in person I just had to have it!  I matted it myself and put it in this frame, also from Ikea (surprise, surprise!) and on sale.

A couple other touches...I re-purposed a standing mirror we had (more on that later), swapped out our old brown lampshade for a fresh white one, traded the hideous Indian-inspired bedspread for a pale green down comforter we already had and bought a basic white bedskirt from Target, purchased a couple of throw pillows for the bed (here and here), and crocheted an afghan for the bed (but again, more on that later).

There's still a couple more finishing touches (i.e. something for over the bed, it feels a bit bare, and polyurethane the top of the desk), but overall it feels pretty finished.  And that's a great feeling, I gotta say!