If you build it, they will come

We moved into the condouse in February of 2009. Since then we have had 1 guest stay with us. Yes, just one. It wasn't even our guest, it was our old roomies guest back when our house had 3 instead of 2. (I am starting to think that 2 really is the loneliest number, because I miss a house that is full and filled with laughter and talks.)

If you will remember a post or two ago I complained that the roomie moving out left us again with a creepy empty room and I set out to turn it into a guestroom/ lounge area that we could hang out in. I thought it would mainly be used for lounging, as our guest-record is rather depressing. (With both Jeff's and I's parents in town, we rarely have the need to house guests and usually have people stay with the 'rents.)


However, the old roomie had her reception in town and with the reception came the need to house guests! Yes, they still aren't really our guest, but guests none the less, and I was happy to take them in. Happy too that the weekend of the reception gave me a deadline to complete my latest project. Otherwise my guestroom challenge could linger for months, much like some of my other recent projects (link paint or posting this about 3 months after finishing our spare room).

I also mentioned in the post of long ago that I was going to try decorate the space for free, or next to it. This was not a glamorous make over, but this is what I had to work with - basically, nada. So I went shopping around the house to see if I could find some useful items to fill the space.

Our garage housed a couple of old dresser drawers and an old side table that I use to use as a night stand.

I also found some old pillows and curtains from our first house, or maybe even my college days? Not sure, but they are old buys from Pier One. With my dresser drawers in the garage, my old side table and a stained pineapple lamp I figured I had all the makings of new room- haha.

I took the dresser drawers and decided they were going to be mounted to the walls to create my new shelves. I wanted some way to spice them up and modernize them, so the room looked a little more current and less like stuff from my garage, so I grabbed some paint we had on hand and I hunted down a cool painting tutorial on the web. Over at Kelly and Olive they have a great Chevron Painting tutorial that I used to paint the backs of my drawers. I wont get into it here, because really their tutorial is great.

The next garage transformation was for that sad side table that I use to use for a nightstand. I decided to unscrew the top part of the table and was left with something more like a stool. With my new little stool I grabbed an extra pillow we only ever use for road trips, a couple of rarely warn scarves, a stapler, and tape. Tools in hand I transformed this little bad boy into a kind of ottoman or coffee table. I just plopped the pillow on top for batting, wrapped the scarves around the top and staples and taped the bottom to make it tight and secure.

In a couple of weeks I had everything together and had my very own, nearly free room re-do!

The desk use to live in our office, along with the side chair. The Strokes poster was one of Jeff's old posters, as is the guitar. The TV was ours, it was just being stored at his brothers house until we had a need for it. We still have the old futon (on the far right side of the room), but thanks to Jeff's sisters letting us switch out our old broken frame for their totally intact frame, it's no longer an issue.

The only part of the room make over that cost us some mula was the closet doors. We found them at the Habitat for Humanity store for $25 a piece. I thought that was pretty expensive for closet doors, but after weeks of looking for cheaper ones on Craigslist that matched all of our other doors in the house, I kind of gave in. I think it was an okay buy, plus it's reused, so that is a plus.

The mirrors were something I bought from Ikea years ago that I had never even opened. The blue vase in the corner was from our old apartment. My favorite part, however, ended up being my dresser drawer shelves.

The beyond cute giraffes are from my grandma. She has had them for years, and hearing me say how much I loved them a few months ago, decided to give them to me for my birthday. I absolutely love my giraffes! I think they will look so great in our nursery one day, and since this room will be the nursery, it's only appropriate that they live there now too. (The picture is of our old roomie, who is a frequent guest in the room now with her hubster.)

One of my other favorite parts of the room is this great chevron woven tray. I had bought 2 of these at Salvation Army for $2 total a few months back. The other matching tray is on my nightstand corralling all my books. I saw almost the exact same trays a few weeks later at Pier One for $15 a piece- good buy Amber!

On my new favorite tray I put a couple of books that are fun to peruse through and don't require any real reading. Hopefully this can entertain our guests with some late night laughs. On my books is a small wood stick game and a harmonica for entertainment as well (although I hope they actually don't use the harmonica- we use it all the time- so that could be some weird germ action going on.) The small pink depression glass bowl is from a previous co-worker and can be used to store guest jewelry and whatnot.

Luckily I had a couple scarves on hand that matched the old school desk that is being used as a TV stand. The color is so bold that I find I don't wear them as often as I should, so I think they will get more use out of being a temporary ottoman for a while.

My old pineapple lamp was spray painted white and the shade was recovered with fabric I had on hand. Because of the odd shape of the shade I had a little trouble and I may need to tidy this up a little bit, but it works for now. The room will work for the temporary time its needed. I think I may add our brown rug that we have downstairs once we get that upgraded to a nicer one, but the whole thing is pretty good to go. We have had a handful of overnight guest since it's completion and it works great.

And for BONUS JONUS points I even tackled more of the hallway that leads to the new guest/chill space. I have all of these paint samples from trying to choose the right gray for the hallway and decided to put them to good use.

I stumbled out into my messy garage again and found my spare picture frames. I didn't think I had enough so I went to the Salvation Army and bought a few more frames to make a good sized grouping.

I laid them out to envision how it would look on the wall, and then decided what frames would be painted what color of test paint. When I was all done I ended up with this:

I mostly used art and pictures that we had on hand. The largest picture is of the Eiffel Tower that I picked up when I was in Paris. The dried flowers are from our wedding. The orange picture is of the Nauvoo Temple that my little sister gave me as a gift.

The old couple grabbing bums is a card I gave to Jeff. The "I like you a lot" is from Salt and Paper and is a free card printable, I just put it on some stripped paper we had.

I really like my little Nevada cut out with a green heart over Las Vegas. I just made this out of paper we had in the office. I am not 100% sold on how it all looks, but I figure it is my first picture grouping I've tried to do, so it may take some practice. I imagine more black and white photos on this wall some day,but first I have to get picture ready, which might be a while. For now, I will take a work in progress- heck I will just take me getting off my lazy butt and doing something in this house! Especially if it only cost me $50 bucks for closet doors and some change.