A Swell Place to Dwell - Guest Bedroom Revamp

Happy Wednesday everyone! Our second round of house guests arrive tomorrow, so I'm thrilled to have another wonderful blogger fill in for me today while I make some last minute tweaks around here. Say hello to Kelly from A Swell Place to Dwell...

Hello fancy readers! I'm Kelly from A Swell Place to Dwell, which is my little slice of the blogesphere where I share my crazy exploits in revamping a 'starter' builder grade home with my husband, while raising a very busy 13 month old and wrangling a totally neurotic great dane. I am excited to be here today, and am super thankful to Kerry for letting me share a little peek into our guest room.

Are you ready? Just imagine you are lucky enough to be staying with us in our house for the weekend. You have a baby trying to share Cheerios with you and a dog who is bringing you his leash. Get the picture? Get ready to relax in this oasis.  Ok, ok....it's not quite an oasis.  But what I hope I have created is a space for my guests to feel slightly at home for the few days they visit us.  The best part?  I revamped our little guest room for $10.  By shopping our own home and redoing a Kijiji find, I was able to give our tiny little guest room a facelift  and a little personality.

Here's the first glimpse of the guest room from the hallway.  The room is small.  11'x 8' small.  Not a lot of room for fluff....just the essentials.

Let's take a peek inside, shall we?

The little dresser beside the bed was a free find on Kijiji (like Craigslist). I repainted it and added the stencil.  You can see the before pictures and the whole process here.  The stencil was the only thing that I actually bought for the whole room.  Using my 40% off coupon at Michael's it was $10.



On the other side of the bed there are two pieces of framed fabric.  The bright orange fabric was my jumping off point for this room.  The fabric was from my husband's Great Aunt, who was a Missionary in Papua New Guinea.  It's really bright and a bit crazy, but I love how it adds some serious personality to this room.  I pulled out a poster that I had in the frame and just replaced it with the fabric.  With some of the left over fabric scraps I used scissors to cut out an intricate pattern and framed it in another Ikea frame that I had hanging around.

At the end of the bed is a little stool that has been in my family for years and years.  I repainted it and added some gold dipped legs (see before and afters here).

The little basket holds essentials for our guests.  I've collected all of the sample size products for free through coupons and mailing campaigns.  It's amazing what companies will send you for free if you just ask.

Heading back over to the other side of the room......

I used some of the left over fabric in a tray that I already had.  The tray is meant to hold photos, but I love how the fabric adds colour to the top of the dresser.  I also spray painted an old bottle with metallic gold spray paint to add a bit of bling (almost every room in my house has metallic somewhere).

Above the desk is a gallery wall of sorts.  It's comprised of odds and ends that were had stuffed away in a closet.

The guy with the crazy lips came with my husband when we moved in together.  He bought it in Cuba and loves it, but I wasn't quite sure about it.  The lips were a little bit too much for me to handle.  I figured he'd been stuffed in the closet long enough though (the mask, not my husband) and should be displayed somewhere.  I think he fits perfectly in this room.  Even though he's from Cuba and the crazy fabric is from Papua New Guinea, they seem to be a perfect fit for each other.  Plus, once the mask became part of a collection of art, the lips became less creepy.

Well, that's the whole tour of the room.  To give you a quick idea of what you can do for $10, here's a look at what the room looked like before.

And after, one more time for comparison's sake...and to save you from scrolling up.

Thanks so much for being a guest in our house! Feel free to pop on by A Swell Place to Dwell and check out some of my other projects. Click on the photo to see the full post.

Thanks so much for stopping by today Kelly! I love that you were able to put this whole room together by shopping your home (and spending $10 on the stencil - totally worth it!). Inexpensive updates are my favourite thing, and this one is no exception! We're still working on making our own inexpensive updates - so keep an eye out for more coming soon!