A Tale of Two Guest Rooms

After a long renovation process you really do lose some enthusiasm for creating new projects. But, the serial renovator is never cured, just in remission. Even though we are thrilled with the results, the kitchen/laundry room took a lot out of us (and our bank account). So, we took a long break and then we were once again triggered by the desire to improve our spaces. This time it was the two guest bedrooms. One had been set up as a guest room, at least it had the appropriate furniture, ever since we moved in and the other had always been a storage room, in fact serving as our master closet for about four months while we were doing the master bath.

Here are the photos of the two bedrooms from the real estate ad:

Upstairs in the back of the house

Upstairs in the front of the house

This is what they looked like when we moved in:

Upstairs in the front of house

Upstairs in the front of house

Upstairs in the back of house

Upstairs in the back of house

We were thankful for the beautiful hardwood floors throughout this house and we refinished all of them right before we moved in. Neither of these rooms had pink paint, another reason why we could wait as long as we did to renovate them. But, they did have the plain slab doors, small door casings and baseboards, and no crown moulding. We painted the ceilings and had the crown put in when we did most of the other rooms, within weeks of moving in. But, we held off on the baseboard and finishing the crown moulding until we were ready to dive in and fully complete these rooms. We also put the panel doors in when we were doing the rest of the upstairs so they would all match. But, we waited on the closet doors until we were ready to finish these rooms. And, we took advantage of a sale on wood blinds when we got the blinds for the master bedroom and put them in all of the upstairs windows at the same time. That also gave a better look on the outside of the house. No one could tell from the outside that the window casings didn't match the blinds and the rooms were not finished.

The first step was getting the trim work finished and the closet doors replaced. That went pretty quick and thankfully moulding designs stay around for many years, so you don't have to worry that the style you picked out won't be available when you get around to new rooms. It is one of the few items you can still count on like that. It is hard to believe, but people used to buy furniture, china, and silver a few pieces at a time over many years. Now, if you don't buy all the pieces you want right now, you won't find matching pieces ever again. Maybe on some china and silver, but really you'd be lucky to still find those patterns 5 years later and only if they were really popular. Anyway, I started the prep work on the back bedroom first since we decided to finish that one first. It made sense because we had all of the furniture and most of the accessories. It would be that much easier to get done and be ready for guests. And we had guests coming, so we set a hard deadline for ourselves.

Painting was the first step and Alan had to do all of that difficult sanding on the walls just like every other room in the house. We continue to be amazed that an entire house could have such a crappy paint job. You'd think you'd figure out how to avoid all those roller marks and drips eventually. Or, maybe an entire team of incompetent painters each did one room simultaneously. At least that would explain why there was no improvement. I knew I wanted to do a purple/gray color in the front bedroom, but I tried more paint colors than I ever have trying to find the right color for the back bedroom. I did have a rug already and needed to stay within that palette. And, turns out I don't have an unlimited palette that I like. There are only certain colors I like to see around me all the time. I ended up picking a green color that at first glance looks exactly like the master bedroom, which again at first glance looks like the kitchen. Apparently gray/green and beige/green are favorites of mine.

Once the room was painted, it was just a matter of decorating. We still aren't totally finished with the accessories, but here is how the back bedroom turned out:

The furniture was in our guest bedroom at our old house. The rug came out of our old dining room. And the loveseat, which is also a recliner, came out of our old family room.

We immediately started on the next guest bedroom. This time the color was easier to choose because I knew what I wanted, but I still must have looked at four samples before picking the final color. I also wanted this room to have a completely different feel. I patterned it a bit after the powder room downstairs. A little wild with some bling.

The bed and armoire came from our old master bedroom. We sold all the other pieces as we had upgraded the bed to king quite a few years ago, so we could sell a full set of furniture with bed and keep the second bed and the armoire to use as base pieces in a future guest room. Ended up working out like we planned.

We saw these chairs at Home Goods and bought one thinking that you only really need one crazy chair in a room. But, after an extensive search to find another chair that would work in the room, we gave up. We thought it would make sense to have matching chairs after all. We knew we were right when we went back to Home Goods about a month later and the other chair was still there. Guess we were the only ones that liked these chairs. Thank God.

Like the back bedroom, we still need a little more work on accessories and we keep threatening to paint the little table under the mirror silver and black, but the room works and it is finished enough that guests can enjoy it.

I'd about decided that I just wouldn't have any more posts on this blog because I just couldn't see us doing another project any time soon. But, even though we really don't have any more money for this house, we were triggered by Spring to once again want to get serious about the landscaping. So, we are getting bids on that project now. Next post I'll get started with that project. It won't get done as quickly as the other projects, but I am hopeful we can do it a section at a time so we can at least feel a little bit of accomplishment. That is one good thing about landscaping, you can tackle a big project a piece at a time and not feel like you are living in a construction site.