The Summer Ends Guest Room

I know today is the first day of Fall, but it still feels like late summer. The days are warm with low humidity and mornings and nights are cool. 
The next month are so is perfect weather, just like the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring. 
It's just the right time to get the house ready to transition into Fall....

I love our guest room that overlooks the side and backyard. 
It's not too big and it's not too small. 
It has a large closet. 
The windows are in the corner and light comes in from 2 sides of the house. 
and it has the pretty curvy plank headboard that Mr. DIY made. 
This was our daughter Jenny's room when she lived with us and she picked out the paint, which is pretty and relaxing. 
The whole room feels comfortable. 

I love the curtains too.

I recently found the white comforter at TJMaxx.com. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it, but I think I will.

I love the textured design. Plus it's soft. 
The textured design reminds me of bedspreads from when I was a child. 
You might call it vintage. 

The bed is really comfy. The mattress has a gel foam topper on it and it's super soft. 

One of these days, I'll get to painting the night table a different color. 
Sadly, so many projects have piled up in the past few years.
Yes, I said years!

I'll make an announcement on my other blog soon with an update about why, but I'm not quite ready to do that just yet. 

I don't want to jinx it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Pam

Cottage Guest Room

Hello Friends!

We had some very special guests come to stay at our house a few weeks ago.
Our sweet little 3 month old granddaughter came for a visit (with her parents) and helped me celebrate my birthday. It was so nice to have a full house. 
  
Our Cottage Guest Room used to be our youngest daughter's bedroom and was the first room painted in our house.  Actually, it was painted the very day we closed on the house and before our furniture arrived. 
The bedroom has evolved over the last year or so, adding curtains, a headboard, new bedding and a few accessories, some new and some pulled from other rooms in the house. 

I found this scripture sign at Hobby Lobby.com .

The sign brings back sweet memories of when our girls were little and we would sing Galations 22-23 on our walks to the park a few blocks away. 

The blush comforter is so cozy and cuddly, without being too heavy and warm. 

Last year, Mr. DIY built this Queen size, Curvy Plank Headboard. It was one of the easiest and most inexpensive building project we've ever done! You can find it HERE if you'd like to see how it was built and how little it cost!

The twig wreath was a craft project from our last house. We had a birch tree in our front yard that would drop lots of thin branches after we had a really breezy day. One day, as I was collecting them, I had the idea to make something with them. You can see that post HERE. 

The Cottage Guest Room is a little larger than our other guest bedroom, which I've had plans to make into a room for when our grandkid(s) sleep over. 

It's only been 2 1/2 weeks since our guests left and we're ready to have them back and stay in the Cottage Guest Room

Thanks for stopping by!

Pam

How To Build A Curvy Cottage Headboard

Gustavian is such a fancy name for a curvy farmhouse style headboard that is so easy to build.It's such an easy project that it only took about 5 hours to build and finish. It can easily be built on a Saturday and finished the same day if you start early and already have your supplies. 

And it's REALLY inexpensive!

We've never had a headboard for the Guest Bedroom Queen sized bed, and I really wanted Mr. DIY to build one after he built a fabulous Farmhouse Bed for our youngest daughter when she moved into her apartment. I saw a Gustavian bed while perusing Pinterest. The bed costs well over $2,000 and I knew Mr. DIY could build a headboard for a LOT less.

Off to Lowes we went.
Supplies purchased:
5 - 1x 6 x 8 (for the center part of the headboard)
2 - 1 x 6 x 6 (for the "posts")
2 - 1 x 4 x 6 (or the braces in the back)
1box 8 x 1 1/4" Exterior wood screws
4 - 1/4" x 20 x 1" long bolts
4 - 1/4" flat washers
4 - 1/4" x 20 tee nuts (bolts, washers and tee nuts will be used to attach the headboard to the metal 
                     bed frame.


COST: $75
UPDATE: let your boards sit for a week. Mr. DIY constructed the headboard the day he purchased the boards and a week later, they shrunk and the width had gone down by 1/2"

He cut 5 of the 1 x 6 x 8 boards in half for the center of the headboard.

Then the boards were laid out like this to accomodate the center to be 65 1/2" and the lowest part of the post is 48 1/2"

He screwed the braces to the back. The top brace width is less to accomodate the curve at the top of the headboard.

Wood boards aren't perfect and are warped a bit. He used a tie down to hold the boards together while he screwed the braces on.

I  made a paper template of the curved top of the headboard. It took me awhile to get the perfect shape.

The template was placed on the headboard and the shape was drawn with a pencil.

Mr. DIY used his jigsaw to cut the shape.

 Then, the whole headboard was sanded.

Next, a 50/50 paint mixture was used to finish the bed. I used Signature Ultra White paint in Satin from Lowe's.
I applied the paint with a brush, then wiped it off for the first coat. For the 2nd coat, I used a dry brush technique. 
This bed also looks great stained!

All finished!

Here's how the headboard is attached to a metal frame. 

I can't wait until Mr. DIY attaches the headboard to the frame, the bed is put back together and the bed is dressed!

Here's how the Gustavian headboard looks in our guest room:

You can see more photos of it HERE

Pam

You can see how we made the Farmhouse Bed HERE

The above post is how we made our Gustavian bed. 
We don't take any responsibility for any errors or results obtained from using this information. Using power tools can result in injury. When using power tools, use safety equipment.

We recommend the below products because we use Dewalt tools and absolutely love the Rockwell 4 1/2" saw. Rockwell has excellent customer service!.
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Disclaimer: The above post is about how we built our headboard. We don't take any responsibility for any errors or results obtained from using this information. Using power tools can result in injury. When using power tools, use safety equipment.

Guest Bedroom Reveal

I've been working on the transforming our Guest Bedroom for MONTHS!

It seems like forever.

Our guest bedroom worked for us, but I wanted to lighten and freshen up the decor just a bit since we're getting our house ready to sell and it's the first bedroom you see when you come up the stairs.

I also wanted to spend as little money as possible, which is always a challenge. 

I'm excited to share it with you today, especially because this little makeover cost us: zero, zip, nada. I even made a few dollars on the makeover
More on that later...

Planning For Resale

We are planning for to put our house up for sale soon and have a few makeovers to do around our house. We've been planning on downsizing for several years and we think it might as well be this year sometime. 

The first room is we need to work on is our master bath. Our house being nearly 15 years, old could use a few updates. We will paint and redo the shower surround with tile and have a frameless glass door installed.We haven't quite nailed down exactly what colors and materials yet, but I sure do love the little glass and stone rectangular mosaic tiles we found at Lowe's.

Here's what the bathroom looks like now, with a few years of wear and tear on it. That brass framed shower has got to go as it has seen better days. Besides new tile in the shower, we plan on replacing the faucets, showerhead and vanity light. The Master Bathroom will be our biggest expense. 

Our Master Bedroom needs new paint too. The dark brown paint is showing wear, scuff marks, chips, etc., and it's time for a fresh color. 

Quite a few diy Design Fanatic Facebook followers loved this color in my mock up. I think we will paint the Master Bedroom a light neutral greige and leave the color for the adjoining bathroom. 

Last week I  showed you how we replaced the broken blinds with these Roman Shades and inexpensive Vivan curtains from Ikea. Nothing else needs to be done in here since we just updated the paint a few years ago. 

We've also gave the laundry room a little update, as well. We've painted the room with Rainwashed by Sherwin Williams but still plan on painting the cabinets with Annie Sloan chalk paint. 

I thought it would be good to update our Guest Room since it's the first bedroom a buyer will see once upstairs. The paint still looks good, but we plan to lighten things up by changing out the furniture and add some Vivan curtains instead of the black ones. I figured that if we sell the existing furniture, which we found at an estate sale and Craigslist and use some existing furniture we have in other parts of the house, this makeover will bring in $400  when we sell the furniture! 
Sounds pretty good to me! (if you deduct what we paid for the furniture, curtains and supplies, the net amount might be closer to $0, but at least the sale of the items will cover the cost of the reno)

The last space we would like to paint is the basement Family Room and Bathroom. Basements can always benefit from lighter and brighter paint, even if it is a walk out basement with lots of windows. We may or may not get to this room.

Along with all the painting and redecorating, Mr. DIY is caulking all the windows. making repairs and replacing a few window sashes. The list is LONG! Of course, we won't be doing all of these projects ourselves and will be hiring others to help us out.

While we're doing all of this, we will be working on the kitchen reno at the Mountain Cottage, which we are starting this weekend. I'm pretty sure this reno is going to take many months, especially with all that needs to be done at our home.

I guess that's our project list for the year, until, of course, we find another house that needs some work! 

Pam