Guest Room

I finally got the second guest room painted, just before we celebrate our 3rd anniversary in 963 in October. I don’t really have any good before photos (see below), but if you’ve been here, you know that the walls were a dark muddy green, and since that room is in the back corner of the house, it was dark and depressing. Every time I went in there, it felt spidery, so I wanted to freshen things up.

The before, from when we toured the house (this was a teenager’s room and so had posters and BFF all over the walls – the wall color looks much brighter here than it actually was):

And the fresher after:

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One Guest Room Painted!

Well, the painting of the walls is done. You’ll notice that the painting of the baseboards is not done, so they look less than tidy, and the outlets haven’t been changed to white yet, but everything in its time.

The before, a sort of taupe color:

The shelves that had to go:

And the gash in the wall from where the shelves came down:

And the serene hereafter (just wait until the furniture is back in!). The color – always hard to get across in photos somehow – is Behr’s Light French Gray. It ends up being more blue than gray on the walls.

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The Guest Room

Sanding has begun! Actually, filling holes and sanding are almost finished in the first guest room that we’re redoing, which means taping and primer are coming soon. Last year I pulled the rounded shelves off the wall to make room for the bed (it’s a tiny room and anything that impinges on the floor space had to go – plus they were ugly), and that left a big strip of paint pulled off the wall in two places.

And once we pulled out the big shelf that ran the length of the wall under the window, but was wide enough to hang over the floor and so kept anyone from putting a bed against that wall, we were left with a brown board of nice-enough wood that was cut an inch too short for the space on both ends. Two little dribs and drabs of wood were stuffed in the left-over slots and nailed down. (You can sort of see the edge that’s missing in the picture below if you use your imagination.)

When we banged off that remaining piece of wood with a mallet (viciously nailed down by someone who thought the same tornado that took Dorothy’s house to Oz was coming), I expected to find something solid underneath – drywall maybe, or some kind of something. But there was only ripped plastic and insulation.

So now we’ll slide in some more insulation where it has settled down, tape up the plastic to stop the air leaks, put another properly-sized piece of plywood over it, put a nice properly-sized slab of stained wood over that, and put a corner-round between the wall and the slab to cover edges.

And in the meantime, it’s time to choose a paint color.

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Everything’s Coming Up Roses

963 was gifted with a lovely yellow rose bush from Mrs. N earlier this spring. (Hi Mrs. N!) It’s covered with buds, and it’s starting to bloom, and it smells HEAVENLY. The scent of beauty.

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Guest room #1

We've had a flurry of activity the last couple of weeks so blogging went by the wayside. We headed out to Calgary to see dr. andy graduate with his PhD (hooray!) and then introduced our first guest to 963: Kathleen (aka andy's mom). Kathleen was a lovely first guest, and a good time was had by all. Here are some photos of our first guest room (the room is small so it's hard to get a picture of the whole thing from one angle). The only thing we've done to this space so far is cleaned it and set up the furniture. At some point we'll change the paint and the shelving and the closet doors, but not today. And not tomorrow. And oh, not next week either. 

I should also mention that we're soliciting room names. If we had a zebra-chair and low lighting in this room, for example, we could call it the Zanzibar room. And then you, dear readers, as future guests could ask if the Zanzibar room was available for your specific dates. Now all we need is a reservation line.

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