B’s Guest Room is Getting a Makeover!


Real Talk: I’ve been a bad blogger. It’s been over three years of having the blog and I’ve hardly ever taken you guys into our guest room. When we FIRST started the blog I snapped a few pics but honestly since then…nothing.

Since we moved in, this space has been a “catch-all”. I really haven’t invested any money into it except for a few IKEA pieces and a few thrift store finds. The rest of the furniture and accessories in this space are hand-me-downs or overflow from the rest of the house. Don’t get me wrong I’m SO grateful for hand-me-downs, especially since those precious pieces saved us a lot of money at the time AND allowed this room to function as a guest room for the past four years.

The Current Problems

guest room

It’s time overdue for a change. After lots of discussing, Matt & I have decided to make this room into our new office and our current office into the guest room. We think swapping these two rooms will make a lot more sense for our house while solving some of the current problems we’ve been facing in this space. Allow me to explain some of the current problems:

  1. We gave away a lot of the furniture in this space to a new homeowner who was looking to fill his new house. It was a win-win because we were looking to start fresh and he was excited to give the dresser, nightstand, shelves and chair a new home. This isn’t necessarily a problem (it actually turned out to be a great thing) but the problem is that we don’t have anything left in the guest room, which means we HAVE to get going on this project soon! #yay
  2. The guest room is the lightest room in the house (two windows that get lots of sunlight almost all day long) but since it’s a guest room, we hardly ever use it. In a 1,000 square foot house, it seems like such a waste to not use an ENTIRE room consistently… especially the one that’s the brightest all day long.
  3. We have guests every once in a while (like Casey!) but 355 days of the year, the room sits pretty much unused. If I need a place to throw project materials or a place to hold holiday/birthday gifts until I wrap them, I’ll throw them on the bed in the guest room. But outside of those random times, we barely ever use this room, which again seemed like such a waste.
  4. This room is small-ish — like 11×11. I always thought one day we would transition this room from a guest room to a nursery when the time came. But then I realized that our current office is quite a bit bigger than this room so why not use that as the nursery someday? Don’t get the wrong idea, THERE IS NOT A BUN IN THE OVEN… but it’s always good to have a tentative plan for the future, right?

  • Right now, I’m not in love with this colorful room. It’s full of random overflow items and not full of items I love or items that are meaningful to us. Plus my style has evolved a lot since we moved in and this catch-all space isn’t me. We always preach the importance of loving your home and making it reflect your style and your journey, and this bedroom is not doing any of that.
  • My Goals for this Space

    guest-room-fauxdenza-minted

    So it’s FINALLY time to tackle this room and make it an office that we will use everyday and one that is a lot more me. Here are some of the priorities I’m keeping in mind as I plan:

    1. Hidden storage: You guys know the drill, our small house needs all the hidden storage it can get. I definitely want to work in as much stylish storage into this space as possible to hide all of our office supplies (including our printer) like Casey did with this fauxdenza in her guest room.neutral-couch-pillows-blanket
    2. Neutral colors: Nothing against bright colors, I LOVE them on Pinterest, the blogosphere, and at Target, BUT I’ve learned that I don’t love to live with them.office desk and gallery
    3. More my style: This colorful room has taught me a lot about my design style and has opened my eyes to one of the hardest parts of finding my style. I see so many amazing spaces that I love online, in magazines, or even in stores and it’s sometimes hard to decipher what I love and want to live with and what I just love to look at — there’s a huge difference but sometimes that line gets blurred. I think I’m slowly arriving at my style and I want to use this room as a canvas to continue to hone in on that.
    4. Minimal: I’ve also learned that I don’t like seeing clutter. Maybe it’s the small house or maybe it’s just my organized nature, but when I see items out (even decor sometimes), I instantly feel like it’s a cluttered mess… which stresses me out! I’m hoping to make this space intentional, functional, and pretty minimal. The last thing I want to feel is overwhelmed and stressed in a place where I should be getting work done!
    5. Easier access to our closet: Access to our crawl space is in this closet and right now the door situation is not working well. I’m trying to research options to open this space up so we can get in and out of the crawl space easily. lowes-makeover-bedroom-reveal-plant-white-vase
    6. Try something new: As I said before, I think I’m slowly but surely arriving at my style… mostly by learning “what not to do” thanks to a lot of trial and error. But I also want to use my current house as my chance to experiment before we buy our “forever house”. So with this space, I want to take a few chances and try a few new-to-me things to see how I like living with these looks. By doing this my hope is that I’ll have my style really nailed down by the time we move. Who knows if that plan will ever work, but it’s worth a shot, right?!

    Time to get to work!

    I hope you forgive me for being a really bad blogger and totally isolating this room of our house (so much so that I don’t even have photos of it!). Between hand-me-downs and being at a total crossroads, I never knew what to do with this spare room! But now that I have a plan, I can’t wait to get started transforming this space into our office so it gets A LOT more daily use. Once this room is transformed, I’m sure we’ll have to tweak the current office when it’s time to make it into a guest room so this project should definitely keep us busy… and of course, we’ll keep you updated along the way. Next week I plan on checking in with design plans for this new office space.

    Bridget


    The Year of Casey

    Hey there!

    Iโ€™m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a Chicago gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself! Learn more about me right here.