Glorious Guest Room

After a year and four months in this lovely castle we have called home, I have learned one thing. (Well, actually, I have learned a lot, but I am only going to talk about one today. :-) )

Home renovations never go as quickly as planned.

One year, three months and seven days ago, I blogged about the spa'oom as we liked to call it. I showed you pictures of what it looked like, and the theN current state, and promised the after pictures "real soon." And now, approximately 440 days later, we are finally finished, and I'm back with pictures. Hey, good things come to those who wait, right?

Here's a refresher of what the room used to look like, taken the day after we closed on the house.

Lots and lots of honey toned wood, grass green carpeting on the floor, on the headboard and on either side of the dresser mirror. Black floral wallpaper, black valances and black blinds. Builtin window seat, dresser and desk on one side, built in bunkbeds on the other.

We knew this room would lend itself to one of the most dramatic makeovers in the house.

Here's how the hideousness became the lovely view you see above. We tore out the awful wallpaper the first week, and the bunkbeds came crashing down shortly thereafter.

Then we let it sit for a while as we discussed decorating ideas for the room. It was lover's idea to go with a black and white theme with just a few pops of color. Now it was time for the serious renovations to begin.

We spackled the walls, sanded down the builtins and tore out the carpet. Once this was accomplished we discovered that: the walls were in decent shape and were drywalled, so that saved us the headache of repairing the plaster. The builtins were not cooperating with being sanded so that we could whitewash them, so we had to come up with a plan B. The wood floor was in pretty rough shape, with paint splatters, scratches and a random skinny section of the floor that was simply MIA.

We decided to simply paint the wood builtins a crisp white, along with the newly patched and sanded walls. That gave us a clean, blank slate for the rest of the room. The dresser drawers became a matte black, set off by white handles. Funny story: Apparently there are no drawer handles to be had in white unless you are willing to get yucky plastic ones. However, some pretty silver pulls and my trusty white spray paint saved the day.

And now I will leave you with some beautiful before and afters... so you can admire all of our hard work ;-)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Linked to Metamorphosis Monday. Check out the other transformations!