Guest Bedroom Re-do: Part I

I'm baaaa-aaaack!

I don't know about you, but April has flown by! I returned from a business trip to Dallas a couple of weeks ago, and after taking a few days to recuperate, went straight to work on my next project here at home!

The guest bedroom has been on my to-do list for quite some time now, but kept getting bumped further and further down for higher priorities. So far, the only thing I've done to the room is replace the bedsheet that was covering the window with some real curtains. (Please, hold your applause.) A few months ago, I found a pair of suede blackout curtains at Tuesday Morning for $50, which I thought was fairly reasonable. Looking back, though, I probably should have had a more cohesive plan in place for the room before I went out and got curtains. Thankfully, they're just a solid, steely gray color, so I still have plenty of design options.

Due to a couple of recent events (including the acquisition of some free furniture), the guest bedroom project has all of a sudden been put on fast-forward. We also have family coming into town this weekend for a wedding, some of whom will be staying with us. That put me on a tight deadline to get everything done by tomorrow, but I've finally come to the realization that it's just not going to happen. I'm a little bummed, but I want to make sure that I'm happy with the final result and don't make any rash decisions.

With that said, here's the "before" pictures, taken last week. As you can see, we've pretty much used the bedroom as a place to store all our mis-matched college furniture and random crap decor. I would describe the walls as an aqua color, which isn't all that bad except I was getting tired of it.

My master plan for a sophisticated, modern guest room includes:
1) painting the walls gray,
2) adding white furniture,
3) finding a new bedding set, and
4) incorporating accents with bright pops of color (yellow, orange, blue?)

Since I'm not the type who can wait until the room's finally "finished" to post about it, I'll show it in bits and pieces. First on the agenda was painting the walls. Keep in mind that this was our first painting experience in the house. We got a sample of Behr paint called Cool Sky, which looked gray-ish, but ended up being too light. So I figured I'd just pick a darker shade (without trying a sample) and we'd be good to go. That was rookie mistake #1. Once we started painting the walls Denim Light--which also looked gray on the sample card--it appeared to be more blue than anything (I should have known by the name...duh). But we kept going, thinking that maybe it would dry darker and magically look like the color I wanted. Not so. Two gallons and $60 later, we had powder blue walls. D'oh!

I was pretty frustrated (with myself, more than anything), but I really didn't want to paint it again, so I had resigned myself to the fact that I would just change my plan and go with a "beachy" theme instead. But Luke knew I wasn't happy, so he convinced me that we should re-paint it. So, back to Lowe's we went. This time, we got three samples of gray shades and ended up choosing Valspar's Metropolis (bottom swatch).

At first I was a little worried that it would end up TOO dark once it was on all the walls, but I wanted something that would contrast nicely with white furniture, so I took the risk. And I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, although when the natural light shines on it, it still has somewhat of a blue tint. Who knew that finding a good gray would be so hard!! (Okay, so Sara at Russet Street Reno knew! Why didn't I just re-read this post about her dressing room before I painted?!)

Anyway, here's a sneak peek of the new color:

 

In case you're interested, we also decided to try the Shur-Line 2000878 Paint Premium Edger, since it was under $10 and could potentially save us the hassle of taping everything. It took a little practice and occasionally left little blobs that we had to re-touch later. So to be on the safe side, we decided to just use it next to the ceiling and still tape all of the trimwork. But overall, not a bad investment for a few bucks.

Don't tell anyone, but I also left the closet the powder blue color, because I didn't feel like taking the time to repaint it. The door's closed most of the time, and when the light is off it looks like almost the same color as the room anyway. Oh, and just for fun, here's what our living room looked like for most of this week, while we had everything moved out of the guest room.

GAH. I finally got around to moving most of it tonight.

Next up is the furniture makeover, which I'm almost finished with, so stay tuned for Part II!

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