Continuing adventures of our Home Renovation!
We’ve been busy settling into our house- working on the spaces that had been left as “good enough” when we moved in, purging what needs to be purged, adding in new pieces of furniture and subtracting old ones to make rooms more functional and feel finished.
One room that had really been left to the wayside was the second/ guest bedroom on the main floor. It had only a few random pieces that didn’t find a home elsewhere, and was basically a dumping ground for all manner of stuff. It functioned as a guest room only by virtue of the blow-up mattress that would be rolled out when we had friends come to stay, and other than that was a basically like The Island of Misfit Toys.
So my grand plan is to transform it into a home library/guest room. I’ve always wanted a library in my house, always. I love reading and books, always have. I certainly have enough books to build a half-way decent library, between my love for reading and undergrad in English Lit. Truthfully, it is a needed space in our house, as we have about a dozen or more large boxes of books sitting in our basement. And yes, I have read most of them. But you can never have too many books. Or get rid of the good ones. In our last house, we just had two bookcases at the top of the stairs- but in this house, I cant really seem to find a good place to put bookcases, so I guess I will just have to dedicate a whole room to them. The guest room gets amazing afternoon light through two large windows, so it will be a great space to read. I want it to be a cozy reading nook, a place to display all of our books, but it will also function as a guest room when we have overnight guests.
Our Vision
As far as design/ styling goes, the room has the same warm reddish-brown laminate floors we have all throughout the house and is painted Behr’s Cathedral Grey, like the majority of the house. It currently houses my vintage dressing table, which sadly doesn’t fit in our bedroom, but that I love. I will be keeping it in the room, but will probably be using it more as a desk and crafting space for my Cricut Explore Air 2. The plan is to add in bookshelves, a pull-out sofa bed, and some pops of color with curtains and textiles. Some things we have, others we are still on the hunt for. I pulled together a board of my vision for the room:
For some reason with this house, I’ve been really drawn to graphic prints with blues and turquoises and yellows as accent colors- the majority of the backdrop of the house is very neutral; grey walls, medium wood-tone floors, and black and white kitchen and bathrooms so the house really needs pops of color in the decor and layering pieces, which we’ve been doing a pretty good job of, I think.
I purchased spa blue/ mint curtains a while ago, at an event I was invited to via this little blog (post here) because I loved the color and the were $7 each. I bought four panels, which works out perfectly for the two windows in this room. We have also procured an Ikea LYCKSELE HÅVET sofa bed. It has one orange corduroy-like cover, like I linked to, but also has a blue and grey striped one, that I pictured in the board above. I pictured the striped one because although I don’t mind the orange at all, and thinks it provides a nice bit of contrasting color to the curtains, Jon prefers the striped one, and that’s what is currently on it. It provides some color without being too much of a punch in the face, I guess.
The Bookcases
I also purchased some bookcases that were the typical dark laminate wood that is fairly large, in good shape and super cheap. #winning! in my book. I’m planning to paint them white so they don’t look so heavy in the room.
The last major element I’d like to find for the room is a rug. To be honest, we need rugs for almost all the rooms in our house. I’d like to find something bright, but too light, and graphic to add another punch of color to the room. Then some smaller stuff; a reading light, a small side table to hold a cup of tea, a throw & pillows for the sofa, and maybe some artwork if I don’t have something pre-existing that will work.