The Guest Room Saga Continues

Remember how I was once working on our guest room? Oh yes. Apparently I forgot, too. A few weeks ago Jordan had the idea to move the furniture around in the guest room to make more room. We dragged our feet on it a bit and kept saying 'tonight let's work on the guest room.' Once Lucy was in bed, the dishes washed and put away and any other little things done around the house, we were both too pooped and falling asleep on the couch. So the other night after a cup (or two) of coffee, I got to work and moved the furniture around.

So while the room isn't finished, here is how it's currently looking. 

You can see some junk piled up against the wall across from the dresser. This is the wall that still needs work. The pallet will be going up and I'd like to have the chair next to either a bench or a table of some sort. A bench under the pallet would be ideal so our guests have somewhere to put their luggage other than the floor or bed. I just haven't found a bench I like.

Here's the messy view from the door. It might be hard to tell, but there is so much more room with this new furniture arrangement. We should have done it sooner. I'll give him credit, Jordan has some good decor ideas from time to time.

I'm loving the dresser with the vintage books and suitcases. And of course my dipped table. Can you tell I'm loving clear lamp bases with white shades? I recently replaced the lamps in our living room with the same type. 

This swap has motivated me to finally finish this room. I'll admit I'm undecided about the curtains now (which is why I have yet to hem them). I'm also on the hunt for a large area rug, if I find one I like. Of course, the pallet (remember that project from forever ago?) needs to be hung. 

Just wanted to let you all know that I didn't forget about this room! 

The Great Bed Swap

When I was younger and lived with my parents, one thing I liked to do was rearrange the furniture in my room every few months. It was the easiest thing I could do to make a difference in the room without spending any money or doing anything 'big' like painting the walls. It was sort of a challenge to me to figure out different ways to arrange the room.


While we weren't necessarily rearranging the rooms, we did do a furniture swap between the guest room and our master bedroom this past weekend. I was craving something different in our bedroom and was starting to get tired of all the dark furniture along every wall of the room. I had talked to Jordan on several occasions telling him that when we move next I want to swap our bed with the bed in the guest room. 


Here is one of the pictures I took just after I put up the new curtains in the guest room. 

With the white walls, white bedding and the bright sunlight, you can see the bed frame sort of gets washed out. With all the white in the room I decided we needed a darker color to frame out the main focus of the room - the bed.


Here is the guest bedroom after swapping the beds. 

Please ignore the mess around the room. The pile on the left is all the bedding and comforter and feather mattress that we took off the bed to swap. We haven't put it fully back together because we are toying with the idea of moving some of the furniture around in the room. That and I sort of OCD wash the sheets in our house so these will be making a pit stop in the laundry room before getting back on the bed.

It's a little hard to tell with all the junk in the room, but the dark frame really works in the space. We are considering moving the bed to a different wall, creating more space in the front of the room for our guests to move around. 

Now onto the master bedroom. I didn't take a proper 'before' shot the day we did the swap because we did it at 9:00 at night. So I had to rummage around some old photos to get a picture of the room with the black bed. 

And the master bedroom now. 

Again, ignore the messy, unmade bed. I took the picture during the small window of time I had while Lucy was eating her lunch and was too busy to notice I stepped away (about a minute and a half). How much better does it look with the white bed? I feel like we should have done this swap months ago. The height of the tall bed is perfect for the thin wall space between the windows and the white of the frame pulls in the curtains, frame and lamps already in the room. 

Little by little I have been making small changes in our bedroom. I don't often show photos of this room for a number of reasons, mainly because it's usually an unmade bed with toys scattered all over the room and clothes tossed in random piles in the corners. It's our most 'lived in' room where we spend lots of family time cuddling and watching the tube together. I do have a plan for the empty frame above the bed and am on the hunt for a great rug to put on the floor beside the bed. And I'm actually considering stepping away from my sheer comfort zone and getting real curtains. I am such a lover of natural light and have a fear that 'real' curtains will make our room dark. But I think they will also make the space look more finished. 

For now, I will say that the great bed swap was a success!

DIY Guest Room Curtains

I'm excited to say that we now have window treatments in the guest room. I spent a few weeks trying to find my ideal curtains for the room with no results. I never seem to have luck finding window treatments that I like. Hence the white curtains in our living room, master bedroom, Lucy's room, and originally in the guest room. One of these days I'll branch out. When I decided to add more color to the guest room plan I also decided I was going to make my own curtains using the same no sew method I used to make the crib skirt in Lucy's room.


The fabric was purchased from JoAnn Fabrics in a soft pink color. I knew I planned to hang the curtains a little higher than the window so to be safe I purchased two cuts of three yards each of the pink fabric. Once I had my fabric home I got to work hemming the edges. For a detailed explanation of how to make a no sew hem, check out my tutorial for Lucy's crib skirt. 

Once the curtains were hemmed I was ready to hang the rod and see my finished project. I bought the curtain rod from Home Depot a few months back thinking that I would also purchase the curtains and not need clips. When I decided that I was going to make my own curtains (but the no sew method without any rod pockets) I needed clips to hang the panels. I lucked out when buying the fabric that JoAnn Fabrics was having a sale on hardware for window treatments. I snagged two packs of rings and crossed my fingers that the gold would match the curtain rod. I made sure to check when I got home - success! Yesterday morning while my two loves slept I finished hemming my curtains and hung them in the room.

Ignore the awkward furniture and random accessories next to the bed. The lamps will be traded for a more (hopefully) fun approach to lighting and the night stand on the right is a goner once I figure out what to put in its place. You can't see, but I still need to hem the bottom of the curtain panels. Since I wasn't sure the exact length, I decided to wait until the rod was installed so I could see how long I needed each panel to be. Once the curtains were up I was so excited to take share with you all that I didn't hem the bottom before taking pictures. 


The best part of this project? Not only did I make the curtains, but I hung the rod. All by myself. With a drill. And properly anchored it into the wall. I'm pretty proud of myself. It was the first time I ever used a drill. Granted it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to insert the drill bit, but once I tackled that I was good to go! I originally asked Jordan to hang it when he woke up yesterday morning, but I felt bad making him do things around the house on Father's Day. Plus what kind of DIY-er am I if I can't even hang a curtain rod by myself? So I let the boy sleep in and took care of it myself. 


Since I like to 'keep it real' on the blog, here are some shots of how the rest of the room really looks. Eek!

There is still a ton to do in this room, but I'm getting excited with each project completed, no matter how small. Seeing the curtains hung has made me confident in my decision to add some color to the original gold/white theme. It was so easy to do and took little to no time. Maybe I'll make curtains for my other rooms, too....

Happy Monday :)

Pallet Paint DONE

It look much longer than anticipated, but the pallet is finally, 100% finished being painted. It took so long due to a number of things, both within and out of my control. Two weekends in a row of rainy, damp weather didn't help since the pallet needed to be worked on outside on our deck. The pallet was also a lot more prep work than anticipated. I did several rounds of sand, spackle, sand, spackle, prime, spackle, sand before I was ready for the real paint to go on. While I didn't mind a few of cracks and minor flaws, I wanted to make sure to fill in any large gaps, cracks or holes in the wood.

Even when it was finally time to paint, I had to alternate between spray paint and painting by hand to get between and underneath all the wood panels. It was quite a chore. It will be some time before I'm ready to prime and paint another pallet! Luckily my next pallet will be staying as is.  

It's not perfect, but I never expected (or necessarily) wanted it to be perfect.

I bought these great hooks from Home Depot. The look almost identical to the ones in my inspiration photo, except I opted for a different metal finish. These ones are more of an oil rubbed bronze, whereas the ones in my inspiration photo are brushed nickel.

Of course the next step is hanging it up on the wall. We've been going back and forth a little on where exactly to hang the pallet. There are two possible spots: on the left side of the wall right after where the door opens, or on the opposite wall in place of the dresser. If the latter is the case, we may move the dresser into the closet or try to find another spot for it. Because of the size and layout of the room, we are pretty limited in our furniture placement. We also need to plan out exactly how we are going to securly install the pallet so that we can properly use the hooks and hang things from them.

In the meantime I am still planning out the rest of the room, I am on the hunt for some good light fixtures, a solid mirror, window treatments, and a few more gold frames for the wall.   

Pallet Update

This weekend was dedcated to more prepwork for the pallet. 

I sanded down all the spackle spots as well as the rest of the pallet. While I like the 'rustic' look of the pallet, I needed to get smooth edges all around before I primed and in order to avoid any unnecessary splinters.

After a mini discussion, Jordan and I decided not to remove any of the planks on the back of the pallet as we will most likely need them to help stabilize the pallet when we hang it on the wall. (We're still planning exactly how we want/need to hang it so that it both looks nice and will be sturdy enough.)

Once the spackle spots and rough edges were sanded down, I primed the pallet using this spray paint from AC Moore.

One can was just enough to give the entire outside of the pallet a good coat.

After I did the first coat of primer, I started to notice a few spots that need to be respackled and touched up. I also still need to prime the inside of the pallet. I plan to pick up two more cans and hopefully get this boy primed and ready for paint by this weekend.

I'm already happy with how it's starting to look with just a little bit of white paint.

Oh, and here was my helper for the day.

Guest Room Project: Turning Old into New

For the next guest room project I sort killed two birds with one stone. I've been going back and forth with the idea of getting rid of the black metal leaf candle holder on our living room wall. The dark metal contributes to the dark of the room that I'm trying to eliminate. Also with the couch, pillows, mirrors, frames, etc I feel that corner of the room is getting a little crowded.

I always try to reuse something if possible before trashing or donating and this was no exception. With a quick coat of spray paint I thought this piece would be a great addition to the guest room.

As I mentioned on Monday's post I grabbed some gold spray paint from AC Moore over the weekend. I took the leaf off the wall and gave it a good dusting (eek!) before setting up camp outside on the deck.

It was gorgeous outside last Saturday so I really lucked out on a perfect day to spray paint with minimal wind. Wind is always a pain when it comes to spray painting, for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, my little crafting partner was busy with her toys just inside the slider where I could keep a close eye on her. It also only took a minute or so for each coat of paint.

Within a minute or two I had the first coat of spray paint down. There wasn't much of a shiny finish to the metal and it held the paint really well. The only trick was getting all sides of the metal covered evenly since the design is pretty intricate. That and the plate that holds the candle moves, so I needed to make sure I got both sides of that coated well, too.

I'm pretty pleased with how open that corner of the room now looks without the black wall piece. The below picture is without the new pillow covers that I ordered last week. They should arrive within the next week or so. I can't wait to see how they look in the room.

After an hour of drying time I flipped the leaf over and sprayed the underside, careful to fully coat the candle holder.

I repeated this process with two more coats of paint throughout the day.

I let the leaf dry completely over night before bringing it up to the guest room.

I have a few ideas of where to put it, but haven't made any moves to put a nail in the wall. I'm going to wait until I have all decorative pieces for the room together before mapping out where each piece will go. I'm still on the hunt for some vintage gold frames with the hopes of doing a wall collage. I have some great old photos from both our parents' and grandparents' weddings that would be really nice to put on the wall, plus the butterfly print that I bought from Goodeals a few months back. Now that I have the leftover gold spray paint, I may just use some old frames around the house and refinish them in gold.

The detail of the paint on the leaf looks like it was meant to be gold from the beginning, with no traces of the black metal peeking through.

I'm starting to feel like things are really getting moving in the guest room.

Guest Room Project: Refinished Wine Crate

Yesterday I shared with you a teaser photo of the wine crate project I was working on for the guest room. As I mentioned before, this was inspired by the vintage storage crates that Shelley built over at House of Smiths.

I started my project with this wine crate. I snagged it from work a few years back. I had big plans and hopes for this wine crate, but never actually did anything with it.

I have heard from other bloggers that stain can be a daunting project. I honestly don't mind staining. The anniversary gift that I made for Jordan was my first time diving into stain and I honestly thought it was pretty simple. Smelly, but simple. You definitely want to do this in a well ventiliated room. I chose to tackle this part of the project the same day I painted the guest room while Lucy was being watched by my parents. Our basement smelled for a good day or two after staining.

To start, I selected a stain that wasn't as dark as the color I used for the anniversary gift. I wanted a warmer brown to offset the bright white walls and bedding in the guest room, but nothing too dark. I settled on "Jacobean". I also purchased a staining brush. You want to make sure that you use a brush made specifically for stain projects, not a sponge or regular paint brush. It will make it ten times easier to stain when you use the proper tools.

Lastly, I picked up some rope to use for the handles on the front of the crate. Something with some substance, but also that wasn't too thick that it couldn't easily go through the drilled holes.

When you are ready to stain, you definitely want to make sure you use wood that is properly prepped. Any wood that has a finish or gloss to it won't hold any stain. You can try sanding these down and may have luck if you can get all of the finish/gloss removed. The wine crate I had was pretty much a bare wood with no finish at all and that's the best way to go for a staining project.

I decided to first stain the underside of the lid in case I wasn't happy with the color or had any trouble in the beginning. Using a brush specifically made for staining projects, I generously applied the stain in large brush strokes to the entire surface of the wood, in the direction of the wood grain. After waiting a few minutes for the stain to set, I used and old rag to wipe the excess and rub the stain into the wood. Again, I made sure to wipe in the direction of the wood grain.

Once I was happy with how the stain looked, I repeated the process on the opposite side of the lid and the rest of the crate. I was sure to do one side at a time and allow adequate drying time between coats.

Note: I would highly suggest wearing gloves for a project like this. I did not and wound up with stain on my hands from handling the used rag. I quickly learned that wood stain does not easily come off hands. After scrubbing them with little to no results, I researched some home remedies and found that vegetable oil works. It was still a pain, but the veggie oil did the trick.

I also wanted the inside of the crate to match so that if the lid was off, the inside matched the outside. You do want to be careful to evenly apply the stain as thicker, uneven coats will result in dark spots. I like to start light and gradually add another full coat if I wish my color to be darker. I'll admit I have a few dark spots where I either put too much stain or had it on for too long. I don't mind and think it adds to the rustic look of the stained wood.

Once you the stain set overnight (or more like two weeks for me, oops..) the crate will be dry and ready to add the rope handles. I measured four inches in from each side and made the holes about 4 inches apart. Even though the handles are purely aesthetic, I wanted them to look legitimate and be wide enough to grab onto. I also made them slightly higher than center, again just for looks. After marking the spots for the holes, the last step was recruiting Jordan and his trusty drill. He drilled into the wine crate, making sure to make to carve the holes wide enough to fit the rope snug, but not so much that they were flimsy.

Last step is to tie the rope off in the inside of the crate.

I'm thrilled with how this wine crate came out. So much, that I'm actually waiting to get more crates from work to stain and add to the guest room (or somewhere else).

Side Note: Although I removed the wine bottle inserts from the crate, I did keep them in hope of reusing them elsewhere. Jordan and I are on the hunt for a large vintage card catalogue to put in the dining room to store our bottles of wine and bar/dining accessories. I would also like to build something to go on top using these inserts to display a few bottles.