Guest room backstory

I was going to wait until the entire guest room/office/fiance's room was finished and revealed before I started posting individual projects, but this darn room is taking me so long to complete! So I'll start off today with a little background before I start blogging about some of the projects I have actually completed.

My home has three bedrooms, all about the same size, with the exception of the master bedroom having an attached master bathroom. The two other bedrooms share a full bath in the hall.

I used to have a roommate, up until about September, and she used to have this particular room as hers. It was painted a reddish/orange color, which was great, when I first moved in and thought it would just be a rarely used guest room. Well the poor girl had to wake up to that jarring wall color every morning for two years!

I can't believe the only before photo of the guest room is from when the house was being built!

When she moved out, and my fiance proposed, we made plans to turn that room into a guest room/office/place for him to stash his clothes since there's no way they're fitting in my closet once he moves in with me. The first step was painting the room. I seriously has nightmares about painting over that color and envisioned having to use 10 coats to finally be rid of the reddish/orange color known as Paprika. But all it took was two coats of Valspar Ultra Paint + Primer. Its low odor and zero VOC. We knocked out that paint job in one day! This time I went with a much more neutral khaki gray color called Oregon Coast.

Oregon Coast by Valspar

Since painting, I've knocked out a few projects and started on others that aren't quite reveal ready yet.

My mom was nice enough to give me her beautiful arts & crafts style desk that will anchor the office corner of the room. We both have laptops, so I'm not sure how much we'll use this space as an office, but it does give him the space to use if he does find the need to have to study in his fourth year of medical school. Luckily, he'll be doing mostly clinical work until graduation.

I plan on adding some nice organizational type accessories above the desk. I went to Target last night to scope out what they have and I was actually disappointed in their selection.  The search continues, but I'm thinking I want something like Pottery Barn's Daily System.

Pottery Barn's Daily System

I purchased a twin bed on Craigslist for just $35 and already got to work on turning it into a bed/lounging space for the room. I built a headboard, covered the box spring and added furniture feet to it so it has a more couch feel to it. All the ideas came from Pinterest, of course, and I'll post on those later. I also started to work on some of the accessories like lamps and artwork. I'll post on those, too.

The big hold up for the whole room reveal is moving my fiance's dresser and nightstand in there when he actually moves in. I will be refinishing those, probably with some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint (not sure which color yet, but I'm leaning toward Barcelona Orange), but can't start that until the fiance moves in, probably in about six weeks.

Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Barcelona Orange dresser via The Back Porch Mercantile

 Hopefully I'll have everything else done in there by then. Fingers crossed!