My guest room decorating efforts

Our house has two finished attic rooms on the third floor (or crow's nest, as my pa has nicknamed this floor, and which has stuck). One is a guest room for empty cardboard boxes and things we don't know where to put yet. The other is a guest room for humans.

Our old living room rug got demoted and sent up here. As did our old bed and a spare duvet cover. Beige, ugh. That's a lot of brown, folks. No fun.


So I spray painted the faux wrought-iron headboard red.


I bought fabric for curtains that 1) looked happy 2) went with brown, and 3) went with red to tie things together. After hemming, I put the panels on curtain rods with drapery hooks so they'll slide easily. I used some IKEA fabric from my stash to sew a couple orange patterned pillow shams, and the pink cushion was a spur of the moment Amazon purchase.


We got this little lamp as a freebie from a furniture store, so I sprayed that, too. It was unsightly before — I'm not a fan of cheap, fake distressed stuff — and now it's slightly less ugly.


This end table was $10 from Craiglist and needs either refinishing or painting, a project for another day. But for now it's doing a fine job of holding up a $15 Craigslist lamp, which got a new embroidered shade from Target.


The chair should have a cute pillow, right? And the bed should have one of those fancy throws that goes across the foot like you see in decorating magazines or hotel rooms. It falls on the floor and you wonder where to put it, and it's totally useless? One of those. It would break up the beige desert. If I ever win the lottery, maybe I'll get one.

It's a simple room, but much improved from when Grandma G stayed here and it contained only an unfolded futon!