Home Sweet Room

During the winter and spring we took a break from life on the road and decided to cool our heels in Houston to spend some time with friends and family and enjoy the holidays and the short season of lovely weather that the city never fails to provide. Instead of moving into an RV park, we put the RV & trailer in storage and decided to rent a room with one of our friends who has a large house in Katy, but often works offshore in far-flung reaches of the world.

Our friend purchased his house a few years ago but has since lived a good portion of his life offshore which left him little time for renovations and home improvement. The upstairs rooms were exactly as the previous owner had left them – sadly in need of some TLC!

I’m not sure why the previous owners choose to paint the room murder-hospital-yellow and added yellowish lights to give it a truly oppressive feeling, but Russ and I agreed that a paint-job and makeover were absolutely essential!

We started with a few basics….
Step 1: Change out the horror movie lighting with lovely daylight blubs.
Step 2: Remove blackout curtains to let actual daylight in!
Step 3: Scrub mold off of windows to finally see the outside.

From there, we set out to cover over the yellow paint with a fresh, cool gray which would pair perfectly with my idea for a wintery Icelandic hunting lodge. We hunted for the perfect wood accent furniture and pulled Russ’ queen bed out of storage to convert the room into a crisp, welcoming guest room.

We decided to place the queen bed into a “day bed” style which would help keep the middle of the small room more open and allow for an “office space” for me to work on photography in front of the large TV/monitor. That meant moving the pillows around every day from sleeping position to day bed position but, it was totally worth it!

For the details, we selected pieces from At Home (formerly Garden Ridge) and Target. I found the perfect sheer birch tree patterned window panel from Bed, Bath and Beyond and the bed spread was actually from Walmart!

At the end of a long weekend in November, our new room was ready and we were thrilled with the outcome! We now have a lovely spot to rest whenever we pass through Houston and our good friend has a guest room ready for use….or possibly even Air B&B….who knows?! We will be back again this November and are eager to tackle another room with similar gusto!