ORC: GUEST BEDROOM–WEEK 4

The quick and dirty here is that I’m turning our guest bedroom from a space that has housed a lot of convenient decor pieces we have, to a real retreat for our visitors in 6 weeks. If you’d like to catch up on the evolution of this bedroom, be sure to check out posts one, two, and three.

Today marks week 4! This is a really weird part of the transformation because I’m deep in the “it’s gotta get worse before it gets better” stage. Not that this room really got that bad at all because I’m not making any major changes like moving walls or flooring, but the room had to be cleared out in order to paint the walls and ceiling this weekend, so it’s looking a bit bare at the moment. Except for all that beautiful new paint!

Our whole house is painted a neutral gray color, and I am excited to cozy up this room with a warm white. But I can also tell you from the first week of living in this home, I’ve wanted to paint the ceiling black! So, Benjamin Moore’s Olympic Mountains was a perfect wall color to compliment Midnight Dream that I put on the ceiling. Spoiler: I freaking love it!

The process was pretty straight forward. I prepped the room by taking everything out of it, except for the bed (which would have had to be disassembled and, no thank you), then I removed all the wall plates and the smoke detector. The smoke detector is hard wired, so it’s going to probably be relocated to the wall whenever we hire someone to do a couple small things we want. I looked into black smoke detectors also, but for now, I’m choosing safety over vanity since all our smoke detectors are new! I covered the bed frame and mattress with a plastic drop cloth. Much to Matt’s pleasure, our house doesn’t have too many overhead lights, this room included, and has switches that connect to outlets instead, so nothing to remove on that front. Then, I bought three gallons of Ben by Benjamin Moore in a flat sheen, two for the walls and one for the ceiling. I learned that flat means the walls won’t be wipeable and matte means they would be. Flat isn’t a problem for me, so that’s what I picked. The price point was good for Ben at about $33 per gallon after a 20% off promo. I spent about another $50 on painting supplies since I apparently got rid of any that I had since the last time I painted four years ago. I got a tray with liners, a Handy pail with liners, Purdy two inch edge brushes, rollers, and an extender pole for the ceiling. All in all, I’m happy with my investment.

The first coat on the walls took a little over two hours to complete with the second one going faster. Each plane of the ceiling took about 15 minutes. I decided last minute to do the edging with some help from painters tape, but as expected, the result wasn’t perfect with the orange peel texture on the walls—even after pressing the tape down and doing a light coat of the wall color on the edge of the paint first. Not a big deal though, I just got a small artsy paint brush and went back to fix the spots after they were dry. I’m crazy about the results! Still debating on putting some fairy lights up there before the end of this transformation.

Now that the walls are painted, I can’t stop thinking about adding a painting above the head of the bed. I picked this up from Target a while ago, but I’m starting to realize that I would prefer 1) a different dimension and 2) something with more attitude. So, I got to thinking about what photos I had access to that I could blow up and frame until I had an aha moment–Iceland! Some friends and I went last fall and we took LOADS of photos! So I’m trying to decide between the two options above. What do you think?

For the opposite wall, I just ordered this mirror and can’t hardly wait for it to get here with all it’s 37 inches of wonderful! And speaking of ordering things, I got these wall lamps in that I want to use on each side of the bed. I ordered them in both color options to see which one I liked better in person and I’m so glad I did because it wasn’t the one I was expecting! My final choice is this black and brass. And at $99 for the set! The rest of my current orders are boring hardware things that will be the undercover stars of the space. You know, functional necessities.

So along with lengthening my list to include making a framed print, I’m also looking forward to constructing some stools, figuring out bedside tables to put things on and under them, the addition of some trim to the window and closet, as well as just adding some greenery, cozy accessories, and maybe even some comfort snack foods to the room. One more time before I go, because this photo is giving me butterflies:

There are going to be some big changes in the next week as I exit the “worse” phase and move on to the “better”! And again, be sure to check out what the featured designers of the One Room Challenge are doing here, and the other guest participants (like me!) are up to this week here. Love, Shauna