Monday, September 14, 2015

Be Our Guest

Hear ye, hear ye! Official blog proclamation time: I hereby declare it House Tour Week!

Alright...that might be completely overselling it, but we've been doing a lot of work around the house in the last few months, and I thought it would be fun to show it off. So I've got a few posts lined up this week to give you the details on all things #houseofbowden

First up: The new guest room.

It's a bit of a funny shaped room, the doorway is on an angle, and there's a tiny nook in one corner. But despite a little bit of awkwardness, there's still a decent amount of space.

The glamour shots from when we moved in...


Previously we had it set up as Piper's room. And by "set up" I mean, her bed and dresser were in there. We truly never did anything to make it special so for the first year of living here, it was a sad sea of cream and beige, in desperate need of an update. (I can't even find any pictures of the room from after we moved in, so you know it wasn't looking good...) Once we decided to have the girls share a room (more on that later this week!), it made the most sense to have them take the largest of the three bedrooms, and trade Piper's for the guest room. Swippity, swappity. 

Since we had already set up the guest room (again, I use "set up" loosely) it was mostly just a matter of relocating everything. There was slight concern that a queen bed might not fit, but after measuring we were convinced it could happen, even if it was going to be a teeny bit tight. But because things were going from a larger room to a smaller one, we had to re-home some of the items. The antique dresser and sewing machine unfortunately had to go...

The guest room as it was...



The new guest room space needed a new coat of paint, and after MUCH hemming and hawing, we decided to just go with white. I figured that was easier than trying to find a color we loved, or landing on a beige that didn't look too pink/too green/too much like face makeup (I struggle with beige...) As luck (slash my color-OCD) would have it, white ended up being nearly impossible too, as we somehow chose shades three times in a row that clashed with the trim. Finally I just brought the trim in to the store for them to match (genius, I know...) Success at last. (Good news is, we kept my streak of never ever liking a paint I choose on the first try. It's a gift, I tell you).

But that was fortunately our only set back, as the rest of the work was just putting things in place. Our goal was to make it look nice while spending as little time and money on it as possible (I was about 8 months pregnant at the time, so my actual goal was just getting all of our junk out of the hallway before we had another human moving in with us). It's maybe not 100% finished or perfect (is anything?) but for now at least, I really love how it turned out. On with the reveal!

















You can see it's pretty similar to our Pittsburgh guest room, minus deep purple paint. And bonus: aside from new curtains and some lampshades, we already owned everything else in the room. What I love: It's bright and clean, and a good mix of modern and vintage.
And the other side of the room:


We tried to make some use of the little nook. Someday we'd like to put "built in" type shelves or even a little desk in there...but for now, this works.










I'd still love to do a few things in here...Overall I like it, but it feels a little unfinished. Part of it, is that I think I'm not accustomed to this much white space...or a room that's complete devoid of junk, so maybe that just takes a while to get used to? It could use a little more color in spots (maybe a throw for the end of the bed, and some art on the back wall) But for now it's a happy little space that I'm hoping to welcome guests to soon (in the meantime I sneak in there every once in a while when I need a break from the chaos in the rest of the house!)

What do you think? Any advice on what would take it to the next level? Does the current look make you want to come visit? Yes! Please do! You can hold the baby while I take a shower! We're all winners!

P.S. 
Everything is pretty old, so I don't have direct links for things, but if you're interested, here's the source list:
Lampshades, pillows, curtains: Homegoods, Duvet: T.J. Maxx, Gold lamps, black side table, yellow pillows: Target, Horse lamp, clock, suitcases, scarves: Vintage, White frames, orange stripe pillow: Urban Outfitters, Basket, shadow boxes, console table: re-purposed props from my visual merchandising days.

Stick around for more decor updates later this week, and in the meantime, you can see all of our house posts- new and old- here.
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