A Tour of Our Home: Lower Guest Bedroom Makeover (Before & After)

Since Kevin and I bought our house in September of 2014 we've been slowly trying to update each room and change things around so it feels a bit more like "us".  The woman who owned the house before us was actually an interior designer and had pretty good taste, so we haven't had to do a ton of extensive work which has been great.  Most of our changes have just been small so far, but I'm sure as time goes along we'll find other bigger things that we want to replace.

Our house has four bedrooms (!!), and since we don't have any little mini-Sodens running around yet, two of the rooms currently remain untouched (and by "untouched" I mean that they're both being used for storage and are definitely not anything to gawk at.  Pretty sure I should have caution tape blocking off the doorways).  But the remaining room on our lower level has been designated as our Guest Room.

Here's what the space looked like before:

Please excuse the green tape in the lower picture.  I didn't think to take any "before" shots until we had already started prepping to paint.  Whoops.

The original set-up in this room wasn't horrible, but I wasn't a fan of the bright blue paint.  I really wanted this room to be a relaxing spot where our friends and family would wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day (look at me, sounding like I'm designing a room in a spa or something.  But really....who doesn't want that when you're staying somewhere?!).

My idea for the room all stemmed from a canvas print I saw at Hobby Lobby.  It had these birch trees on it with gold foil detailing....and I fell in love.  (Anyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I have a slightly huge obsession with anything involving trees.)  It took me over three months before I finally got the guts to go buy it, and as soon as I brought it home everything fell into place.

I knew I wanted to keep the walls neutral and decided to use a gray quilt that would be used on the bed as a guide.  To make sure that the quilt would perfectly match the wall color I actually hauled the whole blanket out to my local Home Depot and had them color-match it.  You heard that right: if you want your paint to match a specific swatch of fabric or art piece, you can take it in and they zap it with this handy laser that will match it a hue of their paint brand.  Genius!  (Color: Behr "Still gray")

Since the blue paint only covered the bottom half of the wall on one side of the room, I was able to get the whole job done in one afternoon.  Here is the end result:

I can't understand how my camera thinks that these chevron pillows are purple,
but they're actually gray.  GRAY.

What do you think of that sunburst mirror?  It looks super-fancy and store-bought, right?  WELL IT'S NOT.  I made myself it using a cheap mirror from Hobby Lobby and a bunch of wooden skewers!  If you're wondering how to make one yourself, don't fret- I'll be sharing the DIY in a future post.

I made this- and you can too!  (Though hopefully you don't burn yourself
with your glue gun a thousand times like I did...)

And here are a few other close-ups:

There a are a few other changes I'm still planning on making to this room, like....

-Replacing the wall-mounted track lights

-Adding a few bed side tables

-Putting some kind of cozy chair in the corner

-Painting the baseboards white

Even though there's more to do I think I've gotten this room off to a pretty good start.  It's our own little oasis for our out-of-town guests! 

And for those that are wondering, here's the source list of where most of the items featured are from:

-Tree canvas print, silver lamp, plant, and twig votives: Hobby Lobby

-Gray floating shelves and chevron pillows: Target

-Feather print and gray serving tray: TJ Maxx

-Gold square picture frame: PaperSource

-Burlap book: Kirklands

-White fuzzy pillows: Kohl's

Now onto the next room....