Getting Guest Ready

Aside from working on the breakfast nook, there's another project I've slowly been working on... I just haven't had much time to share it with you. 


This coming weekend, we will welcome our very first house guest to our rental. So, in order to make her feel welcome and comfortable in our new space, I'm doing what I can to spruce up our basement guest room. If you caught a glimpse of our rental tour last month, you may remember that our guest room was a giant blank slate in the basement that looked like this...

Clearly, this was not going to cut it as a guest space. So, about a week before we were to depart on our Florida trip, B and I set to work. The day we had arrived in BC we had swung by IKEA and purchased a queen size SULTAN HULTSVIK mattress for us to use until we ordered our own king size bed. We were pretty pleased with how comfortable it was, especially as we knew it would only be used as a guest bed. The price tag was a little high, but knowing we would probably have quite a few guests staying with us during our time out west, it was worth the investment in our books. 

That first weekend we had also scored a bed frame and headboard for $40 at a garage sale, and we later picked up a box spring. With all of that behind us, we were ready to get to work piecing together the room. We planned on using or queen size bedding from our room in Toronto, and I had found a cute flat sheet and matching pillowcases at Real Canadian Superstore for $4 a piece that we knew would look great with our bedding. Thankfully, we also still had our light blue queen bedskirt from our old guest bedroom that we were able to make use of. So, with all of the bedding on the room was starting to come together, but it was still a long way from feeling welcoming...

My next step was to work on our garage sale headboard. It wasn't much to get excited about when we first picked it up, but I already had plans for it...

Since I still love the fabric we had used as a headboard in our Toronto bedroom, I decided to use that as my inspiration. I brought a swatch of the fabric with me to HomeDepot, and had one of the flowers on it colour matched. We came home with a sample sized can of Behr's Amazon Moss and I set to work sanding and painting it. 

I must admit, when I first started painting it, I got a little nervous that the green just wasn't going to work in the space. I told myself I had to trust my instincts though, and move forward confidently with my design decisions. In the end, once it was all painted and put together in the basement, I was feeling pretty good about my choice...

Yes, there is still some work to be done, but it's coming together quite nicely so far. The side table was relocated from our living room where Halle had been repeatedly trying to pull herself to standing on this. Not so safe, so into the basement it went, and thankfully it works perfectly next to our guest bed. 

What do we plan to do with our hold headboard that is leaning against the wall? We're talking about hanging it on that section of wall it is leaning against - we just need to pick up the proper clips for it. Hopefully we can get it hung tonight or tomorrow before our guest arrives. We also have some hooks that I would like to add to the wall by the door for our guests to hang purses, bags, etc.

For now... lot's of cleaning and organizing left to do before our guest arrives. The work of a hostess never ends...