Next Up: Changes Coming to the Guest Suite!

This mid-afternoon blog post is brought to you by Daylight Savings Time, which I am blaming for being sleep-deprived this morning and not hitting “publish” like I thought I had. So Happy Monday afternoon!

The longer we have lived in this house, the more I feel like I’ve honed in on a specific vision for it. I’m so glad we didn’t do major renovations when we first moved in; living here has shown me how we actually need certain spaces to function and that has completely changed my mind on some ideas I had when we first bought the home. As I’ve spent nearly four years tackling smaller renovations room by room, I’ve cultivated spaces that feel right for our family and it’s been really gratifying to see those spaces now work together throughout the house like pieces to puzzle.

That being said, I have been feeling like some of my earliest projects don’t quite fit that puzzle very well. These renovations happened so early on that I didn’t necessarily have the “whole house vision” in mind and now that I do, I’m wanting to go back in and re-address some things. There’s one space in particular I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and feel ready to tackle: our guest suite!

When we first moved into our house, the guest suite immediately rose to the top of the project list. Technically, it couldn’t be considered a bedroom at the time because there was no window, but I immediately saw the potential. We hired a contractor to put in a window, strip the wallpaper, and demo the en suite bathroom – you can catch up on the initial renovation in previous posts (click here for the bedroom and here for the bathroom).

We initially finished the guest suite in early 2020 – just in time for a global pandemic and a very long pause on hosting guests. Ha! Eventually, I decided I wanted to add a bit of interest to the plain white walls and started a botanical wallpaper look using paint and a stencil. It was fairly labor intensive and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go all the way around the room so I paused after two walls. Along the way I also updated the bed and bedding and swapped out the nightstands for the ones from Justin and my bedroom (I still love all those changes!)

I recently had some inspiration for the guest suite that I think is going to make it make so much more sense with the rest of the house – it gave me that excited, adrenaline feeling in my gut that made me know this is the right direction to take the room! Here’s what I am going to be addressing:

1. Finishing the Faux Wallpaper. I do want to complete the wallpaper look all the way around the room and I’m going for it. I know that it will be time consuming, but I truly believe it will be worth it!

2. Paint the trim + doors + built-ins dark. Initially, I chose white walls and a light greige contrast trim because I thought it would help brighten the fairly dark room (the window is partially shaded by our back deck and with that + the angle of the house compared to the path of the sun, it never receives direct, bright sunlight). Now I have more confidence in leaning into the natural shadowiness of the bedroom and I want to go dark green on the trim. The goal is a cozy, moody retreat!

3. Finally update the ceiling light! The last remining boob light (if you know, you know) in our home has numbered days and I cannot wait to see it go.

4. Repaint the en suite bathroom. With the wallpaper going on every wall in the bedroom and the trim going dark green, I think I’ll need to change the guest bathroom color. I am currently leaning towards a pink and again, it’s giving me that adrenaline feeling of being nervous for a dramatic change but also excited because I think it’s the right call.

5. Replace the carpet. We are finally ready to get new carpet in the works throughout the whole basement. The current carpet is very worn, stained, pulling up in places, and just very much in need of being replaced. I do want to replace with another carpet because a) our basement gets very cold and carpet is such an easy way to keep it warm and cozy and b) this is a big rec space/entertaining space for kids and carpet makes more sense to me for kids to play on.

I’m starting this week on the wallpaper stencil – you can follow along on Instagram for the play-by-play!