Disappearing Guest Room

You know you've been in your house for a while when your "before" pictures were "after" pictures not too long ago. In the cascading changes that started with our new addition and ended with the kids each getting their own bedroom, we redid the guest room after finding a new use for the furniture in there (more on that later). The biggest change: installing a Murphy bed, so now the room is so much more spacious for our crafting activities and still can transform into a guest room for the few times (seriously, just once or twice a year) that we have visitors.

After much research by D, we went with Wilding Wallbeds for our Murphy bed. They were a little pricy but we liked that they were made with all real hardwood, rather than plywood, MDF, and veneer. Specifically, we got the Remington in natural/alder finish.

The problem? The thing was SO hard to build. D is very handy (seriously, just wait a few posts and I'll show off his amazing carpentry skills) and I watched him struggle to put it together. And, in fact, there are some holes in the wrong spot. Because he had to DRILL HIS OWN HOLES. We knew this would be no IKEA assembly, but we still figured that holes would be predrilled, for example. It didn't help that we were up against a deadline because of course it would, in fact, be the once-to-twice-a-year time that we were having visitors. For a couple of weeks, the room looked like this:

Before I show you how great the finished product looked, let me dig up a picture from a 2021 post as our "before" picture.

And here it is now! We got a bookshelf on one side and the desk addition. The desk is so cool--you can leave things on the desk when the bed is open. Look at all that floor space!

And here is the bed extended. You can see that decor-wise, it looks very similar to how it did pre-Murphy bed. Same pictures, same bedspread, etc. But now we have a queen-sized bed and a much cushier mattress, instead the full-sized regular bed that had been there. And it folds right away for most of the year!

We also made a few updates on the other side of the room. Here was the "before" picture:

I chose to keep the vanity I had used in our pre-addition bedroom rather than the campaign desk (real wood antique-store find rather than a Target buy) and I lost the storage in the tall dresser and had to figure out where to store my craft supplies. 

You may recognize that tall piece from a very different place:

That's right. I moved around some doors and spray painted the bottom drawer (and the leg caps) gray and now it's blends right in! No more neon green, no more baby room. Just lots of beading, fabrics, and embroidery floss storage.

And it wasn't really worth photographing, but most of the closet storage we installed in the office here has now been relocated to this room. The door unit now contains most of our paints and glues and the mesh drawers holds playdoh, stamps, and knitting supplies. And most important, it's all contained and largely neat (or, at least, hidden away).

The hard part now is just remembering to call it the craft room and not the guest room!

An office to work in

For years, the so-called "office" was anything but. Despite our best efforts at organization over many years (see: 2017 closet redo,  2018, and 2020), it was impossible to keep it looking like an office with toys in it. It always resembled a messy toy room with a desk in it. Here's a view two walls, a few weeks after we broke ground on the addition but way before they had to start coming in the house (and therefore also before our crown molding project):

The other side is no better (probably worse). You can see that we are still using the 2017 closet system, but really had trouble containing all the kids things.

In the end, there really wasn't a magical solution except adding more space. By building the addition, we were able to give each kid a bedroom (more on those updates in future posts) and that gave them the space to move the toys to their rooms. Are their bedrooms magically neater and better organized? Of course not! But now at least the mess is their problem. Admittedly their rooms ARE much neater than these office pictures, because they have more storage space and fewer toys (items are divided across two bedrooms and also they are just growing up and keeping fewer toys, *sob*). They also think twice now about accruing stuff--at one point, I almost shed tears of joy when one child said: "I want this, but I have nowhere to put it."

So with the toys out, how did we decorate? I'm so glad you asked! We knew we wanted to create a kind of hallway to divide the desk area from the path into the addition, and found a cute barrister bookcase in an antique shop with two layers. Because of the modular way it is constructed, it was easy to dismantle and bring home. The top needs resurfacing, but otherwise it is in pretty good condition and creates a room divider that doesn't leave either side too cramped, because it's only about chest-high.

With that purchased, we knew that the other piece, that would go on the now-empty wall across from the addition, ought to match and be a medium wood without too much trim. We perused a bunch of mid-century modern shops and set up keywords in various online marketplaces, but it was clear it was going to cost a lot to get something we liked. UNTIL we lucked out and found someone selling a piece on Craiglist for $50. True, it was almost an hour away and, true, it seemed impossible to get home, but D was up to the challenge. It was completely modular and D managed to tetris the whole thing--two bookcases with cabinets, into our SUV in a very impressive way:

The piece, made in Yugoslavia--apparently a popular place for "cheap" MCM furniture in the 1970s and 80s--is absolutely amazing. This might be one of my favorite pieces of furniture now, made especially sweet by the thrill of the hunt (I think that's also why I enjoy perusing antique shops). This is really the view from our bedroom now, so it's important to me that it looks nice, showing off books I enjoy without being overly cluttered.

We also bought a new filing cabinet (and printer stand). Nothing too exciting, but it's nicer than the cheap medal filing cabinet that was so flimsy that it dented if we opened it by pulling on the draw itself and CERTAINLY nicer than the milk crate stack holding the printer.

And that's our office!