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Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Multi-purpose Guest Room



Hi All,

We've had our first overnight guests in the Baltimore house!

It was the hubby's parents.  We haven't seen them since the 2019 winter holidays.

We hosted them for a lovely long weekend here.  The weather was the PITS but we had plenty of space in the new house to stretch out, play games, and most importantly, eat and sleep.  

It is always motivating to me to have guests.  They make me finish projects that are 90% there - the guest room was one of those spaces.

The Beginning:

It really was one of the ugliest rooms in the listing, but it was a large enough room with great light and a large closet.  The rest was cosmetic.  I also thought the cork wall would be amenable to an easy wall treatment, peel and stick wall paper or fabric.




We had already set up the office space - our roommate needed a place to do his online fitness classes and Zoom meetings.  We used the refurbished wood desk with the faux marble top and I bought some simple accessories from Target for the room and put up some photos from my travels.



After some deliberation, we added this day bed from Overstock that pulls out into a king bed.  I really felt like our guests warrant a true bed instead of a couch fold out and this day bed really does the trick.  It has two twin mattress stacked on top of each other that you separate when you pull it out into a bed.  It also has two drawers and wooden slats as support - aka no metal bar hitting your back and hip all night.  It was time consuming to put together and I've had to go back and tighten it up with the drill, but it is fairly sturdy and comfortable and really does pull out to a true king.  It's a little low when you pull it out in the the king and the mattresses are a little firm. We'll be adding a topper to it soon in order to help with both of those issues.



I spent quite a bit of time on the ceiling light lampshade as noted in previous posts.  Unfortunately the fabric bottom part diffused the light a little too much and our roommate was having to turn on extra lights to be seen on Zoom classes and meetings.  I cut off the fabric but the edges looked too raggedy so I bought a new shade from HomeGoods.  They really do have great prices for these sort of things.  Well, actually first I bought this tiny crystal shade that was way too small and the in-laws got to hang out with it for the weekend while I bought a new large shade from Home Goods and mulled things over.  It's like @maximizingtiny says, measure before buying. As soon as they left, I went to Lowe's and got some chain links and then did some tweaking to get it up and level, with final touches from the hubs.

Most importantly, we covered up that horrible cork wall.  The roommate had gotten used to it as a Zoom background but I was still horrified.  I had ordered some peel and stick wallpaper - it didn't actually stick.  The corkboard consistency was just too irregular for it to stay in place and it looks bumpy and ugly.  This outdoor fabric was the perfect choice - strong, thick, and easy to staple in place.  See the blog post for more details on how we got it up.


So we have different configurations depending on if guests are in this room or not.  When the guests are here, the bed gets pulled out to the king size and the desk gets moved to the corner.






When there are no guests, the bed becomes a twin/daybed and the desk is centered on the wall. That way our roommate can do his online classes with the fabric wall backdrop and the lighting is almost perfect.






Oh yeah, and I've definitely shopped the house for this bedroom.  I'm using the custom entryway table from Etsy from the last house as a side table - the hubs requested something longer than the traditional side table given the bed's railing and dimensions and it works almost perfectly.  I am also using the medallion from the master bedroom from the last Baltimore house and the Silver Spring suburban house in this room - goes well on the wall alongside the windows and dresser, which was in the guest room closet at the Silver Spring house.  I am thinking about adding a large floor mirror instead of the small gold mirror from the previous house's entryway.  Only issue is where would it go when we have guests?  But that's not enough of a deterrent.  I saw a few at a home store the other day that were reasonably priced or it would be easy to DIY as well.





As you were...

-E