New Paint, New Room!

***UDATE: Guest room? Check.. See the full tour here*** 

I need to catch you up! A lot has changed in our house over the last week or so. I mentioned in the Cardboard Chandelier post that we got the wild idea to swap our downstairs guest "suite" with our upstairs "tiny-bedroom/walk-in closet/catch all" room, and I'm so glad we did. 

See what I mean?!  The room before was our closet, storage, project, basically a catch all for things that we had no home for.  We used it as a walk in closet, and while it was really fun having a huge room to get ready in, (we'd heat it up, so nice!) it wasn't the cutest place in the house.  No I think I've seen cuter pantries than this.  You've got to see all the before pictures...
Originally we used the interesting downstairs of our home as a guest "suite", we thought it would be SO cool since they would have their own level, bathroom with shower, patio, entrance.... the works, right? And I love how it looked, it was definitely cute:

These were the colors of our last bedroom in the old house, so it came together pretty seamlessly as a guest space. Until we learned all these wonderful obstacles we had to deal with down there.  First of all, it's more likely to be considered a basement. Under that carpet is concrete, and once the temperature dropped - it was freezing down there! All the time!

Our main source of heat is the upstairs wood burning stove. So even when it was toasty upstairs, this room was frigid. OK, we thought - easy - get a small heater.  Problem #2: No door. That staircase interestingly enough leads straight upstairs into the living room. With no door. Heat does NOT stay put.

Then the last straw hit - did you know basement (and basement like places) don't smell good? I never knew. I don't really understand these spaces. I've never had a basement or similar, and this was driving. me. insane! It's a moist, earthy smell that would only go away if the dehumidifier ran 24/7, which it turns out, only works when the temperature is over 50 degrees - so the heater would have to run 24/7 as well. Hello energy bill! For a space we're never in?  So one morning we just caved in and realized, why in the world are we fighting to keep this a guest room, when we wouldn't even sleep down there? And the switch began.

Here's the old upstairs room, you can see how cluttered and all around not cute it was:

Pack Rat status! However, this room is upstairs, wonderfully warm, and most of all didn't smell like a basement. Sold! It may not be the biggest place in the world, but we knew if we kept it simple it would work. We emptied the room and decided, a bold accent wall would add a lot of interest to this tiny-windowed-space, and we went with Soldier's Love or some other ridiculous paint name. It was Soldier something. I don't remember because it was a 5 minute decision, we walked in and just compared about 4 colors and went with it. Luckily it worked out!

I started on the edges while Ralph prepped the rest of the supplies.  Then of course we filled in the middle, let it dry & repeated.  We were done with this whole wall in an afternoon, and guess what? No tape at ALL.  I highly highly highly recommend this little helper:

I was skeptical but now am a believer, and I'm not paid at all to promote this inexpensive thing, I just can't imagine a paint job without it.  It's the Shur-Line Paint Edger and I'm sure every hardware store on the planet carries it. 

So there you have it. We've started in on another room, and while I  love how it is now... our end goal will be to have the room slightly nautical, but not strictly or over the top because it's small.  Just the suggestion of the beach, not the whole beach itself.  The colors will be along these lines: Blues, Navy Blue, White, Light Grey, and of course some hints of Red. I see a lot of pillow covering in my future...

Since it was getting late we started by "shopping" around the house (and closets!)  for matching accessories and found quite a few things. These were solid white frames that we scuffed up with a sanding sponge in 5 seconds:

The images inside were along the right colors and so cute - Ralph found them when going through an old memory box, a friend of his painted these "Endangered Spacies" back in college.  Get it? They have little space helmets on...haha... I love them. Plus, we have ten million banana slugs outside. I used to think they were rare until we moved here.

Then I found a bunch of random things in the right color range, that are waiting for a shelf project to finish (here's the shelf project!) so they'll get a good home.

There we go -  now you can see the direction we're going. Check out my board on Pinterest full of ideas for this space: Guest Room Ideas.  Oh wow - sneak peak! See that blue table in the shot above? Yep - if you look in the earlier shots it was brown. We just finished that up too... see the tutorial here! Here I'll show again:

So what do you think of our new guest room, cozy or crazy? We aren't done yet but we've got a lot planned to really get it where we want to be. My favorite part is that we've only spent $14 so far, and that was just on paint. As for the downstairs, fear not - it will get it's redo next.  The plan is to make it an office, project, game & dart room, so we can hang out down there on warm summer nights... can't wait for Summer!

Any wild home projects in your near future? I'd love to hear about them!

Keep the projects rollin' friends...

     -Jesse

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