Redecorating the Guest Bedroom: The Finishing Touches and Big Reveal!

The guest bedroom has been the latest decorating undertaking here at chez moi. I’ve documented how I DIY’ed the wall paint color and how I created the headboard with the Greek key detailing. This post is about all the other details and how the room as a whole has come together.

First up, some wide-angle shots to give you an idea of the entire room (although the middle two photos make the paint color look MUCH more purple than it really is; the others are much more realistic-looking):









It’s really not a big room, so we tried to set it up in a way that made it feel roomier than it really is and to take advantage of what space there is.

When we moved in and slept in here while we were working on our master bedroom, we positioned our bed on the wall catty-corner to this one. Our bed is a full and this one is a queen and somehow placing the bed on that other wall dwarfed the room immensely. So we decided to try this bed here, and I think it works really well! There’s still enough space that you can walk comfortably around the bed.

One of the things I wanted to do was add some touches that would make this room feel more like a home-away-from-home, rather than a leftover-room, so I made sure to stock the dresser with things like tissues and a notepad and pen. And if you need some more bedding, it’s right here and waiting in vintage luggage that I’ve used to prop up the floor-length mirror.



I also wanted to put some fun reading material in here, so I stocked it with some of my back issues of different magazines—Lucky, Better Homes and Gardens, Popular Science, Dwell. Hopefully something for everybody!





It’s nice to have somewhere to throw your purse or an outfit, so I took an old office chair that we aren’t using and draped it with an old jersey sheet and pom-pom trimmed curtain to make it feel more bedroom-appropriate. I love the layered effect the materials and how breezy it looks.



The bed is outfitted with the extra throw pillows I got when we purchased the bed-in-a-bag bedding for our master bedroom. Having it all in the master bedroom felt a little too matchy-matchy for me, so I was happy to put those ruffled throw pillows to good use in here!

Since it’s summertime here in Atlanta, I skipped the comforter and just topped the bed with a bedspread I got a few years ago at Urban Outfitters. (It’s what they call their “tapestries.” I think they make perfect top sheets for the summer and really want to get some for our master bedroom, too!)







So, there you have it. That's how the guest bedroom which has gone from this:



To this:



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Redecorating the Guest Bedroom: Creating a Headboard Out of a Door and Some Spray Paint

Over the weekend, I told you about how I created my own custom-paint for our guest bedroom and some photos of that process.

Well, once I had the paint on the walls and the bed in position, I realized the room needed a bit more structure to make it feel like a dedicated guest bedroom rather than just an afterthought. So I got to thinking about headboards and headboard decorations.

I did a bunch of searching on Pinterest and tried out a couple of ideas that used art instead of a real headboard, but they just didn’t look right. It really needed a headboard to anchor the bed to the room.

I had a couple of different options to choose from but ultimately decided to use an old interior door for the project. It’s one that used to be between the kitchen and the garage that we had replaced when we first moved in with a sturdier door (for fire-code and safety reasons). But, like any good crafter, I held on to the old door because I figured I could find some use for it!

Well, I did! I decided to cut it down to size with a jigsaw I bought a couple of months back. A jigsaw probably isn’t the perfect tool for this project—a circular saw would work better and create a straighter line, but circular saws are more expensive so I haven’t bought one of those yet. Instead, I used my jigsaw (this is the one I have) and it worked really well! You just have to keep a steady hand on it and guide it along, but I got a pretty straight cut that I'm happy with.

Since the door I used was a hollow-core door, I covered up the end where I’d cut with (yikes!) a long piece of duct tape that I glued over the opening. I know it’s not the most sturdy of solutions, but it’s on the end that backs into the corner of the room and I knew I could paint over the tape, so you can hardly tell it’s not solid beneath. You could always cut a piece of wood to size for a more durable solution, but I took the lazy way out! I didn’t worry about filling in the opening where the door knob had been, because I just planned on making sure the mattress covered it up sufficiently.

Here's how it was looking so far, cut down to size and with a good coat of white paint:





It definitely was starting to look more and more like a headboard. But when I hung it in place, I knew it was still missing something. It just looked kind of blah being completely white and with no artwork (as of yet) overhead. I decided it needed a little detailing to really make it look intentional.

I’ve seen a ton of Greek key-inspired detailing and decided to try that out here by using some silver metallic spray paint from Valspar's Premium Enamel line that I received to try out.



The really exacting part of the process is in the measuring and taping because you really want the lines to be precise and even. I decided on 1-inch lines and spent about an hour and a half meticulously sketching out a blueprint, taping them off and covering up the rest of the headboard with newspaper so that the spray paint would only cover the sections I wanted. If you try this, don’t skimp on this part! Have patience and take the time to measure with precision. (I just used cheap packing tape that I made sure didn’t peel off any paint.)



Once that’s all in place, I painted over the open areas with my Valspar premium enamel spray paint (in “Metallic Silver”), doing light coats, one at a time.

The nice thing about the premium enamel line of spray paint from Valspar is that you don’t have to wait an allotted time between coats—you can pretty much do one coat and then go back over it with a second, without worrying about botching the job. (I also liked that to use their spray paint, you don't have to remove the cap; it just slides to the side to open or close the nozzle; no more lost lids!)



In all, I did four light coats to make sure the silver was evenly coated across the board. I let it dry for an hour or so and then, carefully, peeled off the tape and the newspaper. Here’s what it looked like:





I was so ecstatic! All my measuring and taping off and spray painting paid off! I did a little touch-up painting with white on spots where I hadn’t pressed the tape down firmly enough or where pencil marks showed through, but that took all of ten minutes.

The next morning, I took my new headboard and hung it on the wall over the bed on some heavy-duty nails I’d hammered into wall studs. (To hang the door onto the nails, I used my electric drill to drill a hole in the back of the door the size of the nailhead, making sure the drill bit only went through the backside of the door and not through to the front.)

And here’s how the door-turned-headboard looks in our guest bedroom:




(Psst! Since I forgot to take a picture of the room with just the paint alone for the previous post, you can get a feel for the new wall color in these shots. You can read more about how I mixed it up myself here.)





I love how the silver of the spray paint has a slight sparkle to it and how the grays of it play with the gray in the paint and the gray of the bedding. It really dresses up the headboard and the whole mood of the room!

Later this week, I’ll show off some more photos of the guest bedroom so you can get a fuller idea of how we’ve set this room up.

Find out more about Valspar's line of spray paints, as well as information about the spray paint I used, which you can find at Lowes. They also offer plenty of tips and how-to videos on spray painting, picking out the right product and more on their website. For more, follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook.

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Redecorating the Guest Bedroom: Creating A Custom Paint Color for the Walls

I mentioned before that in anticipation of family coming down earlier last month, I was spurred to do some decorating in our guest bedroom.

When we first moved into the house, this was the room where my husband and I slept while we took our time getting around to painting our master bedroom (which took more than a month for us to get around to!). Once we finally got moved into the master bedroom, this little room didn’t get touched again until this recent decorating spree of mine.

First up was that I wanted to get some art on the walls. There was a bed and a small dresser and a lamp and a full-length mirror, but art is that touch that makes a room feel cozy to me. So I was playing with some ideas and taping prototypes on the walls when I discovered that the paint in the room was awful. Because even when using painter’s tape, whenever I’d remove a piece to reconfigure my ideas for the wall artwork, big pieces of paint would come peeling off along with the tape, leaving the wall looking like a patchwork quilt:



Painting the entire room became a priority. The room is small and the existing color on the wall was a dark tan (which is on nearly every other wall in this house). The tan made the room feel almost cavernous, so I knew I wanted something lighter to make this room (the smallest of all our bedrooms) feel larger, more airy, more comfy.



I wanted something creamy and, calling upon the whole house palette I made, I decided a light gray would work well and be neutral yet sophisticated enough to serve as a guest bedroom.

Which got me thinking about the fact that I still had some paint left over from when we painted our bedroom gray. I wondered if I could mix that paint with some white and how well that’d do on these walls? It’d save me from having to go to the store, test new colors and buy more paint, so I decided to give it a go! I’m sure this would make any paint professional scream, but it ended up working out really well.



I mixed up a couple of batches and decided on a 1:3 ratio of paint: 1 part gray (“Grey Rain” from Mythic Paint) and 3 parts of bright-white primer. I just made sure to be pretty precise with my measuring (mixing up small batches) and I don’t think you can tell at all that it’s two paints mixed together—phew!

It’s incredible how changing the color on the walls can transform a room, and I think this custom-mixed palest-of-grays accomplished that beautifully! Plus, it was kind of fun to play color-mixologist—and super exciting that it actually turned out pretty well!

I forgot to take photos of the room with just the paint on the walls (go figure!), but in my next post, I'll share some more of the process of recreating this room and then a final reveal!

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