Saturday, February 11, 2012

New Office and Guest Room


Ever since the incident with this gal that rented a room from us for one month and refused to pay rent, I decided to not look for another renter. Instead, I wanted to reclaim the guest room and make it into a really nice home office/guest room. And I've been busy with this project ever since.

First, I had to sell the twin bed which didn't take long and it was gone in a day. That freed up space so I could paint the walls. One of the walls had to be repainted (same color), but the others needed just minor touch-ups. Thankfully, the home improvement store was able to match the old paint perfectly, so all the painting took less than 3 hours. 

Since I had plenty of paint left over, I decided to repaint the hallway as well. And while at it, I realized that the whole thing would look even better if I refreshed the trim. Except, turns out, I didn't use regular pure white for the trim, but instead used some kind of slightly darker shade of white (if it makes sense) but forgot the name of the color. So I ended up repainting all the trim with pure white. Just as things started to look shiny and new, I noticed that the doors looked curiously dark and decided to repaint them as well. Hmm... That's when I learned the most important rule of door painting - DON"T! Seriously, each door took like 5 coats of paint (to be honest, I still have 1 more door to paint, but I'm just ignoring it for now). Well, at least after all this work the hallway looks very nice.

Back to the room though. I decided that it'd be nice to move our day bed from the family room to the guest room so guest would actually have a bed to sleep on. And I promptly took apart this said day bed and moved this heavy thing into the guest room (then I had to do some paint touch-ups from where the metal frame rubbed the walls). But putting this horrible daybed together was a whole different story. Took me like 2 hours of heavy work! All the while I kept thinking about human factors in engineering and design just so I would stay distracted enough not to curse like a sailor.

Finally, with the bed in place, I had time on my hands to sell the desk. It was simply too big for the space and all. And then I got super lucky and found a new used desk that was just what I was looking for and for exactly the amount I sold the old desk for. Sometimes things just work out this way. 

Doesn't this desk look cute? Goodwill, baby! Except I wanted to paint it. And what do you know, another lucky break. I remembered that I had this beautiful blue paint left over from when I repainted M's room last year. This particular color was too dark for the room, so I ended up with like a gallon of this beautiful paint and kept it (very unusual for me since I tend to get rid of things I don't use).

So I painted the desk! And then I changed all the drawer pulls too. They were the usual American ones. Nice, but boooring, the exact kind everyone expects to have on drawers in this country. Well, I bought a pound of roofing nails at Lowe's and a $3 leather belt at Goodwill and made my own handles. Can you say "handsome!", please.

And yet another lucky break (yep, they just kept on coming and it was getting a bit scary like that) - I found inexpensive curtains at Target that totally matched the paint on the desk! Awesome apple sauce and hooray to me! 

Then, late at night, when M was asleep, I moved two bookcases into the room trying to be very quiet. Why? Because he seems to have very hard time when things around him change. But if it's done when he doesn't see it, then he's ok. So I moved the bookcases and lots of books too. And put this nice little desk lamp and made this cute little terrarium (didn't cost me a penny since I already had everything I needed for it at home and in the backyard). 

All I need now is some kind of a rug for the floor and some artwork for above the bed. Plus another light above the bed, maybe and a small bedside table of some sort. But, but, but, I feel like this won't get finished for a few more weeks (since I'm working on a budget here). Still, it's a nice room and the first guest (my Dad) is arriving in just a few days. Hope he likes it. If you want to come visit, all you have to do is give me a call or e-mail me. Always happy to see you, guys!

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