Project House Update: Prepping and Polishing

Since the few nice weeks of Arizona weather are about to start, it means our lives are going to get really freakin' busy. Part of that craziness? Houseguests!

My aunt and cousin flew down to spend some quality time with our grandparents and our house seems to always be Base Camp.

Before they arrived, the guest room still needed some more work. Last we left it, it had been freshly painted and the ceiling fan upgraded, but the list of to-do's was full and long. While we didn't get it all done, we got enough done to make the room feel more home-y.

• Hang curtain rod, curtains, and new blind blades. When we painted, we lowered the blinds so that there would be enough room for curtains, it was now just a matter of pulling the trigger. After switching out the old beige slats for crisp white ones, I began my epic search for curtains. Because it's the guest room, I was more comfortable with the idea of some big, bold curtains. Also, this room will be the future nursery, so I didn't want the curtains to be too girly, which is apparently a big problem with the percentage of floral, flowery curtains. I kept finding curtains I loved, but because they need to cover 96 inch sliding doors, only a handful were long enough. I thought about making my own, but fabric is expensive, especially enough for giants curtains. After a bit of research, I came up with a plan I believe is genius. Do you know what is 96 inches long? Bed sheets. Twin and full bed sheets are 96 inches long. So I found some sheets that tied in the yellow in the bedspread and the gray in the walls from Target. 

• We bought a curtain rod from Home Depot and the clip-style curtain hooks and hung up those sheets, er, I mean curtains. {Sidenote: if you plan on hanging curtains over a sliding glass door with blinds, you may need to space the curtain rod out farther from the wall than the brackets allow. Dan routed out some wooden spacers and painted them the color of the wall to make up for the difference.}

• I'm hoping that with time, they will hang a bit more gracefully and look more like curtains. I am concerned that the pattern is too small for the scale, but for $40 and some extra sheets and pillow shams, if I end up hating it at some point, it won't be the end of the world to change it. 
• Finish turquoise night stand. Even though the end table has been turquoise for months, it was getting a bit beat up without a good layer of sealer. After three coats of sealer and letting it sit outside for 48 hours to cure, it came back inside and returned to it's place next to the bed. With its little turquoise lamp. I love lamp...

• Hang some art. In spite of the fact that we've had two years to fix Dan's giant world map picture, it still sits broken and unable to hang above the bed like I wanted. However, I did manage to doll up the walls a bit. In addition to the ticket box, I purchased this really cute print from One King's Lane. It features a hot air balloon and the quote "Not all that wander are lost" and the teal background goes great with the turquoise accents of the room. The bird print is actually four bird flash cards that I got from my mother-in-law for Christmas, hand matted in some craft paper in a half-off frame from Target. (Upon further review, this photo is terrible and I'll come back and add a better shot of my art when I have the chance.)

Rusty knows he's not supposed to be in this room...

• Hide the bed frame. This one wasn't on the original list, but since I knew we weren't anywhere close to upgrading the headboard, I had to do something to pretty up the bed. Seeing the castors had to end. So I just picked up this cheap bed skirt from Target, figuring a bed skirt is a bed skirt, right? Wrong. Cheap bed skirts look cheap. This one is basically see-through. It's good enough for now, but I plan on spending some more for a better one in the future. (Oops! I forgot to take pictures! Since the room is currently occupado, I'll add some later!)
• Displaying toiletries. Are you like me and when you see something absolutely adorable in the dollar section of Target you have to have it, no matter how ridiculous it is. For example, a tiny, clear plastic bathtub? I refused to leave without it even though I had no idea what to do with it. It sat on our kitchen counter for days until I finally had inspiration. You know how everyone hoards those tiny soaps and shampoos from hotels and no one ever does anything with them? Well, I filled up the tiny tub with toiletries and displayed it in the guest room bathroom, like a hotel.

So, we still need to makeover the headboard, refinish the half-moon end table, fix the world map and hang it, and do something with the pink loveseat. In spite of the work still to be done, the room is definitely a room now, not just a dry wall box with a bunch of hand-me-down furniture. A room with a bunch of hand-me-down furniture.