Guest Room Before & After

We love having visitors come and stay with us, and already several  friends and family have made the trip (some especially brave ones even survived the dusty chaos of our first few months!).  As each visitor's arrival date approaches we have made improvements to the room that right now happily belongs to my sister in law, Lindsay. Here is a before shot of the guest room once the old beige carpet had been removed.  Not exactly ready for guests yet at that point... Note the old orange-painted floors, textured ceilings and the lovely single lightbulb dangling from above for ambiance.  Who wouldn't want to stay with us?? :)

Back when I painted the floor of hallway and stairs I prepped and covered the perimeter of the guest room, as well, with the same dark brown, espresso colored floor paint.  The carpet we are using in this room is another hand-me-down (we'll take anything:)), a large cream colored rug with a wide navy border.  It's simple, crisp, and super soft, which is perfect for a bedroom.  And the fact that it's so big meant that I had less of the floor to paint-- bonus.

When we had the ceilings all over the house sanded and skim coated back in July, the drywall got all over the walls, meaning that every room had to be repainted.  Most of the rooms had colors that weren't exactly what we would have chosen anyway, so repainting was no big disappointment.  But after painting and painting and painting all of this time, I cannot tell you how happy I was to stumble on an extra can of the paint matching the guest room, which was painted a pretty, neutral beige.  I simply primed the areas near the ceiling that had been splattered with plaster and then covered it with the beige-- voila!  Easiest room in the house.  Maybe we will go back and choose our own color in there someday, but for now I know my painting limits, and this color suits me just fine.

The litte chair at the desk is a random old dining chair, part of a "set" of three that we picked up somewhere just after getting married.  I just finished a quick update by recovering the seat with this fun, small scale fabric.

The flower chandelier I found a while back on eBay when we were waiting to close on the house and I was itching to get going on the renovations.  

The new accent pillow is also one of my latest projects, and I'm more in love with this fabric now than ever. 

The big chest of drawers was a find from our seminary days in Pennsylvania, where I found it absolutely buried in the back of a junk shop, covered in dust.  I love how it reminds me of that happy time in our lives together.

The writing desk and brass lamps are some of my favorite finds of all time.  I spotted them back in the spring when I was staying with my parents in Raleigh, NC and passing the time by hitting one consignment/junk/antique shop after the next.  The lamps are solid brass, and even without shades, at $7 each they were a steal.

xo

Liza