I'm testing out the idea of weekly blog features, first of which being "Things I Did" Thursday...we'll see how it goes...welcome to volume one!
After coming home from a recent vacation I flew into some strange full on "nesting" mode. I don't know if it was inspired by seeing a new place or brought on by too much time in the car thinking about things, but when we got home I decided I couldn't live another minute with our guest room as it was. It was fine, it was passable, it needed curtains! When we moved in it was an "okay" color of light grey. I was never crazy about it, but as far as neutrals go it was not bad. My real issue with it came after my friend gave me a beautiful tufted velvet headboard in a rust orange color that just didn't go with grey (this will be funny later). I wanted the room to have a more "outdoorsy" feel, like sleeping in a forest...though it ended up more like a meadow, I'm still very pleased!
I'm the worst in the world at "before" pictures, I get so excited that I jump right in and only later think about what I should have done. What I'm saying is, I'll work on it, but for now the best I can do is prep pictures! After we moved all of the furniture out (to serve as a reminder about how we never want to move again) I set about papering the floors like wrapping a hardwood present!
After coming home from a recent vacation I flew into some strange full on "nesting" mode. I don't know if it was inspired by seeing a new place or brought on by too much time in the car thinking about things, but when we got home I decided I couldn't live another minute with our guest room as it was. It was fine, it was passable, it needed curtains! When we moved in it was an "okay" color of light grey. I was never crazy about it, but as far as neutrals go it was not bad. My real issue with it came after my friend gave me a beautiful tufted velvet headboard in a rust orange color that just didn't go with grey (this will be funny later). I wanted the room to have a more "outdoorsy" feel, like sleeping in a forest...though it ended up more like a meadow, I'm still very pleased!
I'm the worst in the world at "before" pictures, I get so excited that I jump right in and only later think about what I should have done. What I'm saying is, I'll work on it, but for now the best I can do is prep pictures! After we moved all of the furniture out (to serve as a reminder about how we never want to move again) I set about papering the floors like wrapping a hardwood present!
You can see the grey here, this picture is fairly color accurate. What you can't see is the fact that the paint was either flat or eggshell texture...total heebies whenever I would touch it!
As an X Files fan I also couldn't resist making an inside joke with myself while taping the window. Deep Throat never did show...Mulder would be so disappointed!
After prepping the painting began! I thought I hated painting, but this was actually pretty fun! I did all the trim first and then opted not to tape for the green part, but to just trust my hand and go for it...and it worked! Angus was a big help (not!). Keeping his cat tree in the middle of the room where he could watch everything kept him out of the paint...mostly...jerk.
In addition to painting the room, this seemed like a good time to clean up the fabulous art deco doorknob face plates that our house has been blessed with, but that some boner painted over in almost every room! This was WAY easier than I imagined! I had heard you could get the paint of with some time in a crock pot, but I didn't want to ruin any of mine, so I decided to try it in an old pan. After maybe an hour and a half on a low simmer the paint slipped right off like it had never been there! A little brass polish and we were left with this:
Simply stunning. I will be cleaning up the plates in the rest of the house soon!
After we got it all painted this most glorious color of green, it was time to go a little crazy at IKEA. Previously the furniture in the room was just a mish mash of make it work items. In addition to guest quarters we keep our records in the room and we really wanted to display them in a better and less intrusive way. The Kallax system with Capita legs got us pretty darn close to the vision in my head!
We also found these divine curtains on sale, and I couldn't resist them! Funny thing though...now headboard that I painted the room to match, no longer matched! Its original color in life had apparently been pea green and the friend who gave it to me had sponge dyed it to its rusty red/orange. She suggested I do this again and go purple...so I gave it a try! I figure dying it purple is what Prince would do:
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The actual color is really somewhere between these two. It kind of kept the essence of the rusty color with the luxury of purple velvet! The process was super easy. I got a bottle of the liquid Rit Dye in purple, mixed it with maybe a gallon and a half of hot water, gloved up, and sponged it on! It was super hot and sunny that day so I left it in the yard to dry and had a whole new look in no time!
At IKEA we also found this duvet cover super cheap in the "As-Is" section. I'm not totally in love with it, but it works for now and you can't beat $15! We've hung more art since we took these pictures and I'm still hoping we can work in a desk top over the taller record shelves, but I am so much happier with it now! Finally my guests have curtains when they stay!!
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