The O.G. (Old Guest Room): Sanding Everything that Doesn’t Move

https://www.instagram.com/p/YYjWlPuPAq/

The hubby celebrated the gorgeous weekend by staying indoors and sanding every surface in the guest room. I ~~went shopping~~ stayed out of his way. Sanding — though the biggest, most tedious job in our project — isn’t very photogenic. I did manage to take this picture, while we did more shopping. They are the future shelves and back to the armoire, which I will be refurbishing. (In case you thought that I was shirking all tasks in this guest room project.)

I also spent some time in MS Excel mapping out the future room layout. Have you ever used Excel for this? I find it much simpler than some software tools meant for layout.

I just resize my rows and columns so that the cells are square. I do this by selecting the columns I want to resize and then right-clicking to display the menu options. I select Column Width from the menu window and then enter a number. This part is guesswork, and I usually just play around with the width measurement until it looks the way I want it. I then repeat the same steps for the rows to make the cells (grid) square.

Once I have my grid pattern in place, I define a single cell as one square foot. I use borders to outline the dimensions of the room and closets. I then insert the line shape to indicate doors and rectangles for the windows. More inserts are used for the furniture.

Unfortunately, the headboard of the bed will partially block one of the windows. In this room, it is unavoidable. Directly across from the bed is the armoire that I mentioned before. It’s an old TV armoire from Pier One, and it is black with distressed red edges. Not sure how that’s going to fit into the colors I had in mind for the room. We shall see.

Under the other window is a small writing desk, and on the wall directly opposite will go one of my three sewing machines. Yes, that’s right. And ask me how much sewing I’m doing these days….

The closet is a fairly good size. I bought some Martha Stewart modular closet pieces to make it more custom. The other closet, labeled future bathroom, is a once-bathroom-now-turned-storage-closet-by-former-owners. Did you follow that? We are looking forward to turning it back into a bathroom, especially since our home only has a single bathroom right now. It will be wee, but we can be creative. I’m dreaming of modern, streamlined European fixtures. Dreaming.

Oh, and that big green thing in the corner. I have no idea what will go there. But I’m staying positive and calling it my opportunity to do something fun. Aren’t guest bedrooms where you can decorate more for fun than practicality?

What would you do to fill up that big empty corner?