The Guest Room

As promised the other day, the story of our guest bedroom (though it's still definitely a work in progress)!

Here's what it looked like when we first moved in. The previous owners had painted it a bright blue...we love blue, but this was way too bright for us. (Our master bedroom was also blue, but a nice unsaturated old pair of jeans blue...we like that kind of blue so we left it, see the difference here.)

We already had a great queen bed, nightstand and dresser that was P's before we got married (I helped him pick it out though...and when we bought this house we upgraded to a king for us) that fit pretty well in the space. We also had this cream quilted coverlet that seemed like a good neutral base and also meant we didn't have to buy new bedding:)




So, P painted the room Benjamin Moore's Taupetone (when he had off work for a few random days and I didn't. Thanks, luv ya!). Phew, soooo much better...for us (don't worry, you may still read this blog if you liked the before blue paint more!!). It's a bit darker than we usually go for, but the room has 3 windows and I thought the light carpet and light bedding would be enough to make it feel cozy instead of cave-like.




I found these 3 butterfly framed prints at Home Goods. Combined with the fact that I already had these 2 chartreuse green pillows, I decided to go with green and orange for accent colors. See how the copper mirror makes much more sense now? (Read about how this mirror used to be black here.)




Even though the experts always say the bed should be positioned in the room so that it is the first thing you see when you enter (facing you), here's our room from the door. Oops! There wasn't quite enough room for the bed between the 2 windows on that left wall, it wouldn't fit where the dresser is now on the back wall, and the right wall is out because of the closet door and the fact that the door into the room swings onto that wall. So, hopefully no one minds:)





I made some DIY wall art to fill the space in between those 2 windows on the left. I love botanical prints and figured instead of shelling out the money for ones I had seen in the Pottery Barn catalog, I'd just make them myself using clip art. I had the Dover Clip Art series book "Trees and Leaves" and had successfully used it before for invitations like these. I layed out 4 images I liked and printed them on some 8 1/2" x 11" chartreuse paper I had lying around from Paper Source. Hung them in these dark walnut with large white mat frames in a symmetrical grid. Sweet.





Unbeknownest to me, at the same time Kimba from A Soft Place to Land was doing something just like this with the exact same clip art! But printing them in black ink on vellum, then mounting them on brown scrapbook paper and framing them with a more intricate silver molding and wider mat, makes them suddenly a bit more traditional and elegant. I love hers!!!

{just to reiterate...these are NOT part of my guest room, these our Kimba's, she just has really good taste!}

Anyhoo...in the corner between these windows we placed this chair (the Dolce Lounge) from Target for guests to sit on or put their luggage on. I like how its woven tone-on-tone herring bone pattern adds a bit of texture, and its soft oatmealy color picks up the similar color of the throw on the bed.




When you come into the room and turn around, you are presented with this, the most undone part of the room so far. We put this little book shelf we already had on this wall to hold some of our books and give guests a selection to choose from if they'd like to read. But the scale of this is obviously not right for this big wall, so....any ideas? We have a taller/nicer book case that is currently being used in our foyer that we could eventually put here when we get an entryway table. But for now I think this little guy will probably stay, so how could I fill this space in with wall art, ledge shelves, etc.? I supposed I could also center it on the wall and not worry about the socket getting covered. Hmmm...

{I've started collecting the letter Ps...I have 4 now...this one is from Babies-R-Us}

I think the other big thing this room needs to be "finished" (yeah, right, when does that ever happen?!) is window treatments. We currently still have the ugly old-school plastic roller blinds up that came with the house. I definitely need something functional here, for privacy and that blocks the light. Thoughts? At one time I had considered covering the roller shades with some funky patterned fabric (I saw a tutorial online for this somewhere, it involved spray glue), so from outside they would still look white and from inside they would look decorative but still function well. Anyone tried this? Window treatments scare me. They are so expensive and so permanent. What are my other options? Blinds? Help!