Guest Bedroom: Move In to Present, Really.

One thing about living in a relatively small 3 bedroom house- the bedrooms aren't that big.  The floor plan of our guest bedroom is essentially a mirror image of the bedroom that's currently serving as our office.

The office before- vanilla.

There's a window on the wall opposite the door, a closet to your left, and that's about it.  The only real difference is that the guest bedroom sits behind the laundry closet, so the guest bedroom is about a foot and a half narrower than our office.  And the fuse box is in the guest bedroom.  (Who thought that was a good idea??)

Although we don't host guests often (Tabi was the first guest we've had since we moved in 16 months ago), we wanted to have a functional guest room just in case.  We also wanted to avoid having our guest room turn into a junk room like the guest room in our first house did.  As you can see from this photo last August, keeping it clean is a constant struggle for us.

Looks like an episode of Hoarders.

However, we managed to get things cleaned up, donated, Craigslisted, or put away for Tabi's visit and tackle a few neglected little projects in this room.  Here's how things look now.

Ready for visitors!

We painted this room Kilim Beige from Sherwin Williams just like the office way back when we moved in and traded out the brass boob light for a less obnoxious (and super cheap) oil-rubbed bronze one from Lowe's.  All of the furniture in this room is hand-me-down or borrowed.  The bed frame, mattress, and nightstand used to be my Gram's.   The curtains, comforter, sheet set, and throw all came from Target on super-sale last fall.  We already had the pillows, so I was happy they could find a home in this room.  There's a leather bin on the lower shelf of the nightstand for clean linens, and a basic alarm clock, framed picture of a pretty landscape, and Tiffany-style lamp on the top.  The framed still life hanging over the headboard was one of the first decor purchases I made for our previous house.  My friend Laura helped me pick out the print and the frame, and I still love it. Until Tabi's visit, it had been leaned up against the wall in this room, waiting to be hung.  Three cheers for motivation!

Just hanging around.

On the other side of the bed, there's a library table that Steve's mom made that I loooove.  We couldn't find a place for it to live in the rest of the house where it wouldn't be obstructing traffic, so it came to find a home in the guest bedroom.  Luckily for us, the natural finish looks really nice with Gram's bedroom set.  We already had the candlestick lamp and the mirror.  The preserved boxwood topiary was snatched up on clearance from Target after it had been calling my name all spring and summer.

Cord management, anyone?

On the opposite wall from the bed, closest to the doorway, there was a little sliver of wall.  Gram's tallboy lives there.  It is juuuust narrow enough and there's juuuuust enough space between the chest and the bed.  Everything that lives on top of the chest are items that we already had.

Tight fit.

Although our guest room isn't plush, it's functional and looks nice enough.  At this point, there's not much left to do with this room.  The door is a little difficult to close- we think the contractors' drippy paint job on the casing is to blame.  One of these days I'll sand it down and repaint it, but for now we open and close that door so infrequently that it isn't really worth the effort yet.  And this room may eventually be a nursery, so there's not much point in really trimming things out.  Besides, keeping it from turning into a room-sized junk drawer will keep us plenty busy!