House Update: The Guest Room revamp

We recently had the hallway
replastered and whilst we had people in doing that we figured we might as well get another room done – you know,
because it seemed good economy whilst the plasterers were here – but which room to do was the big decision?  The dining room was out because we’ve not decided if we’re knocking through to
the kitchen yet, and our bedroom needs to be rid of some hideous built-in
wardrobes before we can tackle it, the shower room needs loads ripping out and
the top floor is being left until last, so the room  that won was the guest room. 


It wasn’t in THAT bad a state. I
mean the carpet was the colour of runny poop and the wallpaper looked like something an 11 year
old might have picked, but it’s a huge room, and once we’d we filled it with a bed, a wardrobe and added
some curtains and we had a spare room that was usable. It wasn’t pretty, but it was usable. See – how awful was that carpet! 

Because getting the room plastered was a bit of a last minute decision, it meant that earlier this summer we spent a frantic 2 days de-wallpapering the room to get the walls clear to be plastered and then a few weeks later we spent another frantic few days finishing the painting before a new carpet went it.

My plan for the room was to
create a calming space for guests to relax. I want people to come and feel welcome
in the house but we also didn’t want to spend too much on a room that will, for
most of the year, essentially be a giant clothes drying room (if you tell me
your spare room is anything but a space to dry clothes, I will tell you you’re
lying!) In my mind the colours were going to be something like this, and my carpet was picked to go with this vision, but when I started painting the wall, the colour I had chosen started coming out far more blue than I had envisaged. Not in a bad way, but I was thinking more cream, but clearly my paint picking brain was routing me to cooler shades over cosy shades!  

Now, to make this post worth while we probably should have bought all new furniture for the room, but we haven’t. We’ve made the most of what we already had – we already had a king sized bed in there and the wardrobe too, so we’ve kept those big pieces and just added to the room, where we felt necessary and hey, guests get a
king sized bed rather than a blow up mattress, so they can keep their complaints about the mismatching
furniture to themselves! 

Once I’d realised that the walls were changing my colour vision for the room, my colour scheme changed a bit and I went from wanting browns and beige’s to thinking greys and whites would be better. I shopped the house for some of
the other accessories including the curtains, which were from our old house’s bedroom, the chest or drawers were also in our old house, as was the bucket chair and the mirror. And although maybe they aren’t what I’d have had if we’d been buying from new, they work for now I think.

One of the pieces that IS new and it might be the item in the room that I am most happy with, is the lamp shade. It makes me so happy every time I look at it and it’s one of the first things that people notice when they come into the room.

I love how intricate and delicate and well, girlie it is and I adore the shadows that it casts when the light is on, but it’s also cool enough to not make it look twee – that might be the metal that the pattern is punched out of. Honestly, I just adore how pretty it is and we get so many compliments. I picked up one of those fancy looking bulbs too, so whether you look right up at it, or from the side it’s beautiful.

The room isn’t quite finished yet, but I wanted to share it with you now. The plan is to add an original Victorian fireplace to the chimney breast
as there is a hole for one behind the chest of drawers, but I can’t find one that is small enough and is within my budget so I’ll keep scouring Ebay for now. I’d also like to grab a dressing table for the alcove so that guests have somewhere to get ready, but that’ll be something we’ll pick up next time we’re near an ikea, I
guess. I’ve also got a lot of artwork from our travels that I am hoping will bring out the blue in the walls, it’s ready to be printed but we need frames for them all, so we’re probably going to have to wait until said Ikea trip to do that!

One of the advantages of Jim staying in so many hotels is that we have an abundance of hotel toiletries, which means guests get mini’s like they would in a hotel – the jar is filled with berocca, cosmetics samples and painkillers for the inevitable hangovers. The top drawer of the dresser is full of hair dryers and an old pair of straighteners and some PJ’s that I’ve never worn. Things guests might not have brought with them.