This week we're tackling the upstairs guest room. In plan not much has changed, but a couple minor changes have resulted in a completely transformed space. We started with a room covered in thin fake wood paneling, acoustical tile ceilings, green shag carpet, and had a door-sized hole in one corner. Let me visually remind you where we started:
When we removed the wood paneling we fell in love with the ship lap walls...so much that we've decided to leave one wall and the ceiling exposed. What seemed like a simple decision - like most things in the house - has turned into a pretty involved project. The wood had years of glue stains and thousands (thousands) of tiny tacks that were holding the ancient wall paper (oh yeah there was wall paper under the wood paneling) in place. Before we could sand the wood, we needed to remove as many of the tacks as possible (I would say we only managed about 50%). My extremely tenacious mother has spent the last two weeks sanding the wall and the ceiling with one of those little vibrating sander mouses - a belt sander, while faster in theory, would get torn up on the tacks and was useless. After sanding, the tacks were no longer subtle, rusty specks; the rust sanded off and there were now hundreds of tiny points of shiny silver all over the room. Attention to detail is a blessing and a curse y'all. We took a paint brush and painted "rust" back onto every little remaining tack. Even better, we left exposed shiplap in the stairwell, the hall way, and the ceiling in the office so we have a few more opportunities to perfect the process. While super labor intensive the exposed wood has an incredible affect on the room and I've never seen anything quite like it.
I would love for this guest room to be super simple, warm and layered with textural neutrals. A simple platform bed, a place to sit, and a dresser so guests don't have to live out of a suitcase. Two walls are full of windows letting the morning sun in in all it's glory, so I have a feeling blackout shades will be nessecary as well. I'm looking for a creative solution to side lamps - I'm liking the idea of a pendant hanging from the ceiling or maybe something with an arm - windows will be behind the headboard, limiting what we can do with sconces. Aside from the dream of constantly refreshed bouquets of flowers, thats about it.
If everything goes according to plan over the next two days, you will be able to tune in Wednesday and see the guest room in all it's renovated glory. No furniture yet, but refinished floors, painted walls, and that painstakingly (& lovingly) restored exposed ship lap. I feel like I've said it before about other rooms but I think this will be the first, officially, finished room at Wrightwood! I'll start accepting applications now for the honor of "first guest". ;)
