Guest Bedroom Design Plan
Hi all! I hope you had great weekend. This was the project I discussed in my Noteworthy post last Friday, so I figured it would be fun to elaborate and share my plan for our guest bedroom. We actually have quite a few guest bedrooms- four total… technically five if you count the one we turned into a home gym in our basement. Anyway, bedrooms are really fun to design and we have almost everything we need to tackle this space and pull it together. Emmett and I just need to find the time to put in some hours and get it done. Click through for some before & process images, my vision for this space, and my thoughts on how it will look and function once we’re totally finished.
First a little context- this room is located upstairs, next to the guest bathroom. Let’s go way back and start with before images (please excuse the crappy photos). This is what the room looked like when we moved into the house…
All of the bedrooms in our home (excluding the master) have these weird corner shelves. So strange! I get a lot of satisfaction sledge hammering them, though.
Below, you’ll see a very blurry blown-out listing photo. FYI- I did a terrible job taking before photos for this project since it has been in progress for a year. Sorry guys!
This is what the room looked liked 6-8 months ago… remember my enamel desk I thrifted? It used to live in this bedroom before I moved it to the master to balance our frame TV. Also- whatever the existing paint color is on the walls, it changes drastically throughout the day. Our ENTIRE home was painted this color when we moved in. I’m talking every single room, on all three levels. I get that neutral is great for resale, but blah. It’s not for me.
This is what the room looks like today… a mess with a made bed. Haha! Apparently I can’t stand an unmade bed- even in a construction zone… I need to package up the bedding and wash everything sooner rather than later because it’s about to get dusty in here.
There is a reason I zoomed in super tight on this next photo for my post and roundup of ottomans & benches for the end of the bed. Trickery, I know… but now you have the behind-the-scenes visual and a solid dose of reality.
It looks like a chaotic construction zone we started and forgot about in here. That’s the absolute truth… we had more pressing projects, shut the door on this space (quite literally), and stopped thinking about it. We have been waiting on a custom upholstered bed to arrive and when it finally did a few months ago, it was damaged by the freight company. So we had to send it back and request another one… the second one arrived and was the wrong size (we needed a queen and a king showed up), so we shipped that one back, and requested ANOTHER one. Since it’s custom, these things take awhile, so while we’ve been dealing with the bed mixup, we decided to close the door and deal with other projects. However, I was deep cleaning the house the other day, went into that space, and decided we finally need to finish this… even if we have to wait a little longer on the bed. Emmett whole heartedly agreed and here we are- committed to completing this project by the end of summer. I think that’s totally doable!
What have we tackled so far?
- Removing the weird corner shelves.
- Swapping the plantation shutters for roman shades.
- Removing the existing closet doors (the new ones are in the big boxes).
- I actually painted the backside of the door, so you can see the color (remember my door painting tutorial for you guys?).
What’s left on the list?
- Installing the new closet doors.
- Drywall patching, sanding, & repair (where the corner shelves lived).
- Millwork & mouldings.
- Installing drapery.
- Painting.
- Wallpapering.
- Trading the light fixture.
- Swapping the furniture & textiles.
- Styling & photographing.
It sounds like a lot, but I’m hoping it goes quickly. This is nothing compared to our previous renovations… the guest bath, the kitchen, and the basement bath. A bedroom is actually a nice change of pace.
Eventually we’ll replace the carpet in this room as well. We’ll be doing the entire upstairs all at once, so that will be a future project. I’ve been designing with that in mind, knowing it will get updated eventually. For this room reveal, we’ll keep the existing carpet and layer an area rug to make it extra cozy and fit our aesthetic a bit better. I’m actually using the area rug that used to live in our basement media room. Speaking of aesthetic, ready to see the design plan? I thought so! I designed this space over a year ago, but still really love it.
I’m working with Annie Selke on this makeover (who I LOVE), so all of the products are from there (window treatments, wallpaper, furniture, bedding, everything). We have everything here and ready to go, excluding the bed… which will hopefully arrive soon. I’ll be sharing the sources in the final reveal! Of course I also have some surprises up my sleeve, and didn’t want to spoil every single detail. I’ll be playing with texture and finish in this room, which I think will be really fun. It should be a beautiful guest space once it’s all said and done.
What do you think? Can you see my vision? Right now, it looks like we took the guest room from our previous home, picked it up, and plopped it into our current home… which just doesn’t fit very well. Although we haven’t had house guests in awhile (thanks to the pandemic squashing plans), this space is often occupied by friends & family who visit. One last question before I sign off… some readers suggested naming our guest rooms, since we have so many. Any ideas on that? Perhaps a topic to pull from so they’re related (canyons, utah-related things, family names, colors, art, etc)? Or do you thinking naming rooms is weird and unnecessary? Emmett always refers to them by color, while I refer to them by location (back bedroom, etc). We’ve always lived in small homes with a single guest space, so we’ve never had this issue before, but I could see how it might get confusing here on the blog. Have a great day, friends!